At the end of the afternoon, this Sunday, a funeral convoy carrying the remains of the general and other victims of the American strike in five coffins, slowly made its way through the middle of a real human tide in Machhad (north east), second agglomeration of Iran and holy Shiite city.
On the lead truck, men return the keffiyeh, shirts or other clothing thrown at them to the crowd, after having rubbed them on the coffins to attract the protection of the "martyrs" to those who will wear them, according to the images of the state television.
As night falls, thousands of telephone lamps light up in the crowd and wave around the one everyone is crying for: Soleimani, the most popular soldier in the Islamic Republic of Iran. He commanded the Quds Force, an elite unit of the Revolutionary Guards, the Iranian ideological army.
In the morning, the coffins of Soleimani and Abu Mehdi al-Mouhandis, Iraqi pro-Iran military chief killed at the same time as him, had cracked another compact crowd in Ahvaz, perched on the roof of a flowered truck . Ahvaz is the capital of Khuzestan, martyr province of the Iran-Iraq war (1980-1988) during which the general began to shine.
The corner of the screen struck with a black banner, the state television broadcast live for hours a special program on the national tribute, which is to continue in Tehran, Sunday and Monday, then in Qom ( center), before the burial of the officer's remains, scheduled for Tuesday in his hometown of Kerman (southeast).
"Glorious crowd"
Authorities have declared three days of national mourning. Monday will be a public holiday in Tehran, and Tuesday in Kerman. Iran said on Sunday that it no longer feels constrained by any "number of centrifuges", announcing what it has presented as the "fifth and final phase" of its plan to cut commitments in nuclear matters.
The government nevertheless indicates that Iran's cooperation with the International Atomic Energy Agency, which subjects its nuclear program to strict control, would continue.
Without giving figures, the Mehr agency, close to the ultra-conservatives, estimated that an "incredible number" of people had gathered in Ahvaz. State television spoke of a "glorious crowd". Television broadcast images of a mourning crowd in Zanjan (northeast). The cries of "death to America" heard in Ahvaz and Machhad also resounded in Parliament, chanted by several dozen deputies, raised fists, standing in front of the tribune.
Soleimani, in charge of external operations and architect of Iranian strategy in the Middle East, and Mouhandis were killed Friday in an American air strike in front of Baghdad airport. The death of Soleimani, whom Iran has promised to avenge, shocked the Islamic Republic and raised fears of another war in the Middle East.
"The answer will certainly be military and against military sites," Brigadier General Hossein Dehghan, military advisor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, supreme guide of the Islamic Republic, told CNN on Sunday.
"Not war"
"Iran is not seeking war but is ready to face any situation," Iranian foreign spokesman Abbas Moussavi said at a press conference in Tehran.
US President Donald Trump announced on Saturday that the United States had selected 52 sites in Iran and would strike them "very quickly and very hard" if the Islamic Republic attacked American personnel or sites.
Some of these sites "are very high profile and very important to Iran and Iranian culture," said Donald Trump. "Targeting cultural sites is a war crime," said Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif on Twitter.
"Having seriously violated international law" with the "coward assassinations" of Soleimani and Mouhandis, Donald Trump "still threatens to commit new violations (...) of imperative standards of international law", to cross new "red lines", said added Mohammad Javad Zarif.
On American channels, the American diplomat Mike Pompeo, affirmed: "We will do the things which are just, in line with the American law". He also admitted that US forces in Iraq or Syria could face reprisals from Iran.
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