Raisi’s body was laid to rest in a tomb at the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad, where the eighth Shiite Muslim Imam is buried and millions of pilgrims visit each year.

Hundreds of thousands of black-clad mourners thronged the shrine, with its iconic golden dome, weeping and beating their chests in a traditional Shiite sign of grief.

A hadith, or saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, holds that anyone who visits the shrine with sorrow or a sin will find relief.

But for Iran, crippled by international sanctions, facing unrest at home and challenges abroad, today’s heavily religious funeral may not provide the lasting relief the Prophet described, the Associated Press commented.

In a nation of over 80 million, Raisi’s funeral did not draw the crowds that turned out in 2020 to honor slain Revolutionary Guard Gen. Qassem Soleimani, killed in a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad, Iraq.

In the capital, Tehran, alone, an estimated 1 million people lined the streets to mourn Soleimani — a turnout that many Iranians said they did not see this week at the funeral services for their president.

The scenes could reflect public sentiment toward Raisi’s presidency, during which his government has cracked down on dissent, including protests sparked by the death in 2022 of Mahsa Amini, a young woman detained and beaten by the morality police for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code, the AP reported.

The repression, as well as Iran’s struggling economy, went unmentioned in hours of state TV coverage and pages of newsprint devoted to the funeral.

Also notably absent, the AP noted, was any mention of Raisi’s involvement in the mass execution of some 5,000 dissidents in the late 1980s, or any details about what caused the helicopter crash that killed him.

Authorities have warned against public displays of celebration over Raisi’s death, and security forces have been out in force in Tehran since the helicopter crash over the weekend.

Raisi, 63, had been seen as a possible successor to Iran’s 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Iran’s next presidential election is set for June 28. For now, there is no clear front-runner to succeed Raisi among Iran’s political elite, especially not a Shiite cleric like Raisi.

Caretaker President Mohammad Mokhber, a first vice president who was a relative unknown until Sunday’s crash, has already taken over some duties and on Wednesday sat in on a meeting between Khamenei and Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh.

Mashhad had long been Raisi’s power base.

In 2016, Khamenei appointed Raisi to head the Imam Reza charitable foundation, which runs a vast business and charitable empire in Iran and oversees the shrine. It is one of many Iranian bonyads, charitable foundations that were set up with donations or property seized after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

The foundations are not publicly accountable and answer only to Iran’s supreme leader. The Imam Reza charity, known as Astan-e Quds Razavi in Farsi, is considered one of the wealthiest in the country.

Analysts estimate its assets in the tens of billions of dollars, and it owns as much as half the land in Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city, located 750 kilometers (466 miles) east of Tehran.

Raisi is the first top Iranian politician to be buried at the shrine, a great honor. Raisi’s father-in-law is the Friday prayer leader of Mashhad.

Raisi’s death and that of Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian come as Iran continues to back militant groups across the Middle East to pressure its adversaries, especially Israel and the United States. Mourners at the funeral chanted slogans against both countries.

On Thursday, state media published photos of a meeting between the head of Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and the commander of its Quds Force with representatives of Hamas, Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Yemen’s Houthi rebels.

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