Ayatollah Abbas Ali Soleimani, 75, a senior Iranian cleric, was killed Wednesday (April 26th) in the north of the country by a man whose motives remain unknown, according to state media. He was shot dead while in a bank in Babolsar, a town on the shores of the Caspian Sea, about 230 kilometers north of Tehran.

Footage from a surveillance camera at the bank, broadcast by the Tasnim agency, shows a room in which a uniformed and armed man shoots another man dressed in religious dress and sitting on a chair. Two other people then try to subdue the assailant, who manages to leave the room.

#Iran: The assassination of Ayatollah Abbas Ali Soleimani, a aember of Assembly of Experts for Leadership & significant Inam in Babolsar, #Mazandaran.

The killer, who was a security guard, shot him with a Tondar/MP5A3 subgun; ideal for this application. pic.twitter.com/vaoW4xJPC7

— Cᴀʟɪʙʀᴇ Oʙsᴄᴜʀᴀ (@CalibreObscura) April 26, 2023

The shooter was then "arrested by security forces," IRNA reported.

Not a "terrorist incident"

Attacks on Iranian clergy representatives are extremely rare. The previous case dates back to April 2022, when a suspected jihadist stabbed to death two Shiite clerics in the holy city of Mashhad, in the northeast of the country.

Mazandaran province governor Mahmoud Hosseinipour told state television that the attack on the ayatollah was not a "terrorist incident" and that authorities were investigating to determine the killer's motives.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi also called on "law enforcement agencies to act as soon as possible" to find "the causes of the accident and identify the motivations of the perpetrator or perpetrators."

"The attacker was a local resident and was armed," but he was not part of the police, said the governor, adding that "according to available information, the killer did not know the victim," and that Ayatollah Soleimani had "gone to the bank for personal financial matters."

Member of the Assembly of Experts

The cleric had served as a representative of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and as the leader of Friday prayers in several major cities across the country, including Kashan in the center and Zahedan, the capital of Sistan and Baluchistan in the southeast of the country. He held this position until 2019.

He was also one of the 88 members of the Assembly of Experts. Usually composed of clerics elected for eight years by direct universal suffrage from a group of candidates approved by the Guardian Council of the Constitution, this body is responsible for appointing, supervising and possibly removing the supreme leader.

Within it, Ayatollah Soleimani represented the province of Sistan-Baluchistan, one of the poorest regions of Iran. It is home to the Baloch minority, which mostly adheres to Sunni Islam and not to the dominant Shiism in the country.

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At the time of the elections to the Assembly of Experts, Ayatollah Soleimani was on the list of the Teachers' Community of the seminary of the Shiite holy city of Qom (center), a conservative organization.

With AFP

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