Elimination of a religious figure close to Khamenei
A member of Iran’s Assembly of Experts, which appoints the country’s supreme leader, has been killed in an attack in northern Iran by a gunman who has been arrested, the official IRNA news agency reported Wednesday. The incident shows the level of hostility towards the Iranian regime at home as the crisis, which erupted months ago after the death of Kurdish teenager Mahsa Amini, escalated.
“Ayatollah Abbas Ali Soleimani was one of 88 members of the Assembly of Experts responsible for appointing the country’s highest authority, the Supreme Leader, one of his representatives.”
Ayatollah Soleimani was “assassinated this morning (Wednesday) in an armed attack” in the Caspian Sea town of Babilsar, 230 kilometers north of Tehran, IRNA said, quoting an official.
“The assailant was arrested by the security forces,” the agency added.
Ayatollah Soleimani served as the representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and as the imam of Friday prayers in Kashan, a central city between Tehran and Isfahan, and in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan-Baluchistan, a southeastern region home to Sunni Muslims.
Iran is a predominantly Shiite country but also has some marginalized ethnic and religious minorities, particularly in the central provinces and near the borders with Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Iranian authorities have repeatedly warned against attacks by some hardline Sunni groups on elements of the Revolutionary Guard across the border with Pakistan, and have called on Islamabad to counter such violations.
The Assembly of Experts, of which he was a member, is a body of 88 religious scholars elected for eight years by direct universal suffrage from a group of candidates approved by the Guardian Council.
He is responsible for appointing the Supreme Leader and overseeing his work, and he has the constitutional right to dismiss him and appoint a new person if he deems it necessary.
“In April 2022, an attack by suspected jihadists in the northeastern holy city of Mashhad killed two Shiite clerics.”
Iranian authorities accuse Western intelligence agencies and Mossad of supporting Kurdish and Sunni groups to carry out attacks against Revolutionary Guard personnel, the targeting of nuclear scientists and the bombing of nuclear sites.
Last June, IRGC Supreme Commander Maj. Gen. Hossein Salami sacked Intelligence Service Chief Hossein Taeb, who had held the post for more than 12 years, for the agency’s failure to stop assassinations.
One of the most prominent assassinations in Iran has been the assassination of Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, an officer in the Iranian Revolutionary Guard and professor of physics at Imam Hussein University in Tehran. He is the highest-ranking nuclear scientist in Iran. He was described as the “head of the nuclear program” in November 2020.
