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A senior Iranian cleric and member of a powerful government committee was shot and killed by security guards at a bank in the northern province of Mazandaran on Wednesday, according to Iranian authorities.
In CCTV footage shown on Iranian news media, the cleric, Ayatollah Abbas Ali Soleimani, is seen sitting in a chair in a bank when the security guard approaches him from behind, points a gun at his head and fires a shot.
Ayatollah Soleimani, 75 years old, slumps in a chair, his white turban knocks on the floor, as his bodyguard calmly wanders to the side.
Strangely, no one immediately came to the cleric’s aid, and the room remained quiet. The two grabbed the security guard and grabbed his gun, then appeared to let him go. Authorities say he was later arrested.
The shooting targeted only the clerics, and no other injuries were reported.
“Now, our information and documents show that this was not a security or terrorist act,” Mohammad Hosseinipour, Mazandaran’s governor, said on state television, adding that “the attackers fired randomly and did not know Ayatollah Soleimani.”
The attack has rattled Iran’s clerical establishment, which has faced months of protests and public anger demanding the end of his government. President Ibrahim Raisi called for an immediate investigation into the killer’s motives and whether there were accomplices.
Ayatollah Soleimani is a member of the powerful Majlis Ahli, an 88-member clerical body that oversees the country’s supreme leader and, if necessary, names a successor. He has served for 17 years as the deputy of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the provinces of Sistan and Baluchestan, and as the leader of Friday prayers in several cities.
While gun violence is rare in Iran, and the attackers’ motives are unclear, targeted harassment and attacks on clerics have increased in the past year. The uprising against clerical rule began with the death of a 22-year-old female prisoner, Mahsa Amini, who had been detained for allegedly violating Iran’s hijab law.
Shiite clerics are seen as symbols of the Islamic Republic’s theocracy, and many Iranians blame them for the country’s major problems, including social oppression, discrimination against women, corruption and dire economic conditions.
In the protests, which rocked Iran from September to January, some young men and women started a campaign known as “turban tossing,” in which they would seize the cleric’s turban, throw it on the ground and post videos on social media. Some seminary students in the city of Qom told Iranian news media that they stopped appearing in public in clerical attire for fear of being attacked.
“People are so angry with the clerics that if they see a gun they will shoot the first cleric they see,” Mohammad Javad Akbarin, A former clerical apprentice at the Qom seminary turned dissident, he said in a post on Twitter after the shooting.
Mohammad Ali Abtahi, a reformist cleric and former vice president of Iran, posted a photo on his Telegram channel on Tuesday showing him in a car without the cleric’s turban. “No I don’t have a turban,” he wrote. “It’s on the seat next to me so I don’t get slurs.”
In April 2022, Fars News Agency, which is affiliated with the Revolutionary Guard Corps, published a list of clerics attacked in the past decade, saying that “respect for religious clerics has decreased and they are insulted.”
That same month, Sunni extremist refugees from Afghanistan stabbed three Shiite clerics, killing two, at a religious shrine in the northeastern city of Mashhad. The striker was suspended in June 2022.
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