Iran’s supreme leader presides over funeral of late president Raisi (Pictures & Videos)
Thousands of mourners gathered at Tehran University on Wednesday to pay their respects to Iran’s late President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash on Sunday. The funeral procession was led by Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who presided over the prayers and paid tribute to the deceased.
Ayatollah Khamenei led the standard prayer for the dead in Arabic, “Oh Allah, we didn’t see anything but good from him.” Iran’s acting president, Mohammad Mokhber, stood nearby, openly weeping during the service. The caskets carrying the dead were draped in Iranian flags, and people carried them on their shoulders, chanting “Death to America” outside.
The funeral procession then made its way through downtown Tehran to Azadi Square, where Raisi had given speeches in the past. Top leaders of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, one of the country’s major power centers, were in attendance. Ismail Haniyeh, the overall leader of the militant group Hamas, which Iran has armed and supported during the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, also attended the funeral.
Haniyeh described meeting Raisi in Tehran during Ramadan and quoted the president as saying that “the Palestinian issue” remains the key issue of the Muslim world, which “must fulfill their obligations to the Palestinians to liberate their land.” He also claimed that Raisi praised Hamas’ October 7 attack in Israel, which killed 1,200 people and took 250 others hostage, as an “earthquake in the heart of the Zionist entity.”
Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and a delegation from the Taliban of Afghanistan, including their Foreign Minister Amir Khan Mutaqqi, were also expected to attend the services in Tehran. Iran’s theocracy declared five days of mourning over Sunday’s crash, encouraging people to attend the public mourning sessions.
Raisi, a hardline cleric, was a highly divisive figure in Iran. In the 1980s, he oversaw the execution of scores of opposition activists while working as a prosecutor. He unleashed a brutal crackdown against demonstrators angered by the killing of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini in 2022. However, his ultra-conservative outlook won favor with supporters of the regime, and Raisi was viewed as a possible successor to Ayatollah Khamenei.
After Wednesday’s procession in the capital, Raisi’s remains will be moved to South Khorasan province, before being transferred to his home city of Mashhad in the northeast. He will then be buried on Thursday evening in the city after funeral rites at the Imam Reza shrine.
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