DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran interred late President Ebrahim Raisi at the holiest Shiite shrine in the nation on Thursday, days after a fatal helicopter crash killed him along with the country’s foreign minister and six others.
Raisi was placed inside a tomb at the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad, where Shiite Islam’s eighth imam is buried. The region long has been associated with Shiite pilgrimages. A hadith, or saying, attributed to Islam’s Prophet Mohammad says anyone with sorrow or sin will be relieved through visiting there.
Raisi is the first top government official to be buried at the shrine since the 1979 Islamic Revolution. He once oversaw the shrine and a charity foundation associated with it, believed to be worth tens of billions of dollars.
The death of Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and six others in the crash on Sunday comes at a politically sensitive moment for Iran, both at home and abroad. Iranian officials held a meeting during funeral services with militia proxy groups it supports in the region, including Hamas amid the Israeli war against it in the Gaza Strip.
Raisi, who was 63, had been discussed as a possible successor to Iran’s supreme leader, the 85-year-old Khamenei.
Iran has set June 28 as the next presidential election. For now, there’s no clear favorite for the position among Iran’s political elite — particularly no one who is a Shiite cleric, like Raisi.
Jon Gambrell, The Associated Press
