On Wednesday, April 26, prominent Iranian cleric Ayatollah Abbas Ali Soleimani was assassinated in an armed attack. According to the Iranian state media IRNA, Soleimani was gunned down this morning by an assailant inside a bank in the city of Babolsar in the northern province of Mazandaran.
IRNA reported that the assailant was immediately arrested and interrogated by the security officials present there. Moreover, it has been reported that the motive behind the attack remains unclear. Three persons were also reported to have sustained injuries during the attack, however, there is no confirmation from the authorities yet.
Soleimani was a member of the 88-member Assembly of Experts, which selects and supervises Iran’s supreme leader. Additionally, he once served as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s personal delegate to the unrest-ridden Sistan and Baluchestan province of Iran.
#BREAKING: Abbas Ali Soleimani, Powerful Iranian cleric close to the Islamic Republic Leader Ali Khamenei, was shot and killed in Mazandaran’s Babolsar #Iran pic.twitter.com/gtcLlGE89D
— Amichai Stein (@AmichaiStein1) April 26, 2023
According to local media reports, the attacker snatched the guard’s gun and began firing as Ayatollah Abbas Ali Soleimani was sitting in a bank. According to some reports, the assailant was a bank guard there.
Soleimani was the Babolsar imam for Friday prayers and has been accused of taking part in the 1980s executions.
In his autobiography, he claimed that he was selected to lead Babolsar’s Friday prayers so that he could counteract the actions of opposition groups.
In 2020, Iran had unfurled a red flag on top of the iconic The Holy Dome of Jamkaran Mosque in Qom, which is an old Shi’ite tradition symbolizing bloody revenge. The words ‘Those who want to avenge the blood of Hussein’ were written across the war flag. As per Shi’ite tradition, red flags also symbolize ‘blood spilt unjustly’ and also serve as a call to avenge the person who is slain. The Jamkaran mosque is on the outskirts of the holy city of Qom, about 100 miles south of Tehran.
This came after Iranian Revolutionary Guard’s elite Quds Force head General Qasem Soleimani was killed in a drone strike by the US in 2020. He was murdered, along with several other officials from Iraqi militias backed by Tehran, after an American MQ-9 Reaper drone fired missiles at a convoy leaving the airport.
