Thousands of Iranians gathered in Tabriz yesterday for a funeral procession for Iranian President, Ebrahim Raisi, who died on Sunday in a chopper crash alongside the foreign minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian and six others in the Eastern part of the country.
Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, announced a five-day mourning period on Monday and people participated in a funeral procession alongside a lorry carrying the coffins of President Ebrahim Raisi and his seven aides in Tabriz.
Tuesday’s funeral procession saw mourners, waving Iranian flags and portraits of the late president, prominent in a central square in the northwestern city where Raisi was headed when his helicopter crashed.
After the procession in Tabriz, the bodies of Raisi, 63 and Amirabdollahian, 60, will reportedly be transferred to Tehran for another ceremony. Reports said that on Wednesday, a larger ceremony will take place in Tehran, where Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will lead the prayers and foreign dignitaries in attendance.
Raisi’s body will then be taken to Mashhad, the country’s second largest city located in the northeast, where he had been born and raised.
After all the final rites and burial of the deceased, the next political dispensation in the Islamic Republic has been the dominant matter of discussion and of course investigations into the ill-fated crash have started. There are concerns about possible sabotage in the crash incident but for now no details pointing towards that direction.
Vice President Mohmmed Mokhber has taken over as acting president and he will oversee an election within the next 50 days as stipulated by article 131 of the Iranian constitution.
It is not clear yet who will run for the presidency as Iranians are said to be showing fading interests towards election in the country due to the overwhelming influence of the Supreme leader who has the final say in state matters.
The 2021 election that brought Raisi to power was marked by serious apathy as only about 30 percent turned up for voting in the election which critics, and moderate reformers said was a sham and a cover for the stooge of the Supreme leader to capture power and do his bidding.
There might not be any fundamental change in the power dynamics in Iran as the Ayatollah still wields absolute power in the country and the 85-year- old cleric appears to have a large pool of conservative elements to pick as president.
The successor of Raisi will surely face daunting tasks posed by the growing number of moderates and activists who care less about the principles of the 1979 Iranian Revolution and are demanding far-reaching reforms in the country.
This much was demonstrated last year in the weeks of protests that rocked the country following the death of a young woman, Masha Amin, in the custody of the police after she was detained over alleged disobedience to the strict dress code for women.
The new president will operate under the shadows of the Supreme leader, but there are enormous tasks amid the crippling impacts of the sanctions imposed by the West over Iran’s nuclear programme. How the new leader will navigate these challenges remains within the bowels of time?
One other serious matter of concern was how a president could be flying in an old chopper said to be about 50 years old, and probably in bad shape defies logic. But the reasoning in some quarters is that it might not be the age of the chopper alone that contributed to the crash, extreme weather conditions plus challenging terrain and maybe pilot error combined to crash the chopper.
Serious investigations are ongoing as to why the chopper was allowed to take off in bad weather conditions which included a thick layer of fog. So many questions as Iran looks into the future.