Tehran was a normal city yesterday. Shops opened and there weren’t many posters commemorating President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash on Sunday, compared to the abundance of images that could be seen in the days following Qassem’s 2020 death Soleimani, the general in charge of the Quds Force, the target of a US attack in Baghdad. In the capital you could see men dressed in the black shirts of martyrdom, but there was nothing really outstanding in the city. ” Raisi was the same to them. They haven’t even declared a holiday of public mourning”, explained Mehrzad, a programmer who was carried away by the conspiracy theories circulating on the networks about the involvement of high officials of the regime in the accident.
In contrast, in Tabriz, the capital of East Azerbaijan province, the city closest to the crash site, thousands of people crowded to see the truck carrying the coffins of the eight dead pass by. In Tabriz they did close shops and schools, and the streets were filled with mourning. The coffins then traveled to the holy city of Qom and arrived in the capital yesterday to be laid to rest at Tehran’s grand mausoleum, still under construction. Today Raisi’s body will be taken to the city of Meixad, where he was originally from and where he had great ties to the mausoleum of Imam Reza, the eighth Imam of the Shias. His remains will rest there.
The funerals for Raisi and the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hussein Amir Abdul·lahian, will be presided over in Tehran by the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei. Then the coffins will parade through the central artery of the capital, Enguelab avenue. It will be inevitable to check if the turnout equals that of previous funerals, such as that of Soleimani. Mass gatherings have been important in Iran’s history since in 1979 a million people received Ayatollah Khomeini from exile. They are one of the best thermometers of system health.
Authorities on Monday warned against any signs of rejoicing over Raisi’s death, and a large deployment of security forces is expected today. However, celebrations for Raisi’s death quickly erupted on social media on Sunday. The anger, disconnection and hatred of a significant sector of Iranian society towards the leaders of the Islamic Republic and Raisi’s repressive past contributed to this reaction. These are two of the testimonies collected: “I hate Raisi and the Islamic Republic. I’m glad they died, because they murdered a lot of people – said Maral, a 24-year-old student. I spent the whole night drinking with my friends. We listened and sang revolutionary songs, like during the protests” (he was referring to the September 2022 protests over the death of young Mahsa Amini in a police station). “His death does not make me sad and I hope that other people responsible for the repression and the murders will follow the same path – said Mariam, 38 years old, a fashion designer. He was a puppet of Khamenei and did nothing for the people.”
A shopkeeper from Karakh, 20 kilometers from Tehran, had a totally opposite opinion. “Mr. Raisi was a good president – said Xakeri, 60 years old. The supreme leader trusted him. I voted for him. In economic matters, he wanted to improve the situation, but the anti-revolutionary merchants, the sanctions of the United States did not allow him to do so… In my opinion, he is a martyr and should be respected as such. In last year’s events in Iran, he tried to manage the riots with tolerance.”
