Officials announced on Wednesday that a powerful Iranian cleric, a member of the Assembly of Experts that selects the country’s supreme leader, was slain in a violent attack.
“Ayatollah Abbas Ali Soleimani was slain in an armed attack this morning… The attacker was also arrested and is currently being investigated, according to the IRNA news agency, which cited a political and security official from the province of northern Mazandaran where the attack occurred.
The official stated that the assault took place in a bank in the city of Babolsar.
“The assailant’s motive is currently unclear and will be revealed once it has been determined,” the official added.
Also Mahmoud Hosseinipour, the governor of Mazandaran province, stated that the assailant was a member of the bank’s local security team.
“So far, our information and documents indicate that this was not a security-related or terrorist-related act,” Hosseinipour told state television.
Soleimani, 75 years old, was formerly the country’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s representative.
He had also led the weekly Friday prayers in the cities of Kashan, located in the central province of Isfahan, and Zahedan, located in the southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan.
The 88-member Assembly of Experts is mandated by the Constitution to supervise, terminate, and elect the Supreme Leader.
The all-powerful deliberative body is now led by the 96-year-old ultraconservative cleric Ahmad Jannati. The Guardian Council vets its candidates, who are popularly elected to eight-year terms.
The assault is believed to be the most significant against a religious leader in the country in recent years.
In April 2022, a suspected jihadist knife attack in the shrine city of Mashhad, Razavi Khorasan Province, resulted in the deaths of two clerics and the injury of a third.
Tasnim news agency reported at the time that Abdolatif Moradi, 21, was an ethnic Uzbek who had illegally entered Iran via the Pakistani frontier a year prior.
Moradi was executed for “moharebeh” or “war against God” in June in the same city.
On the third day of the holy month of Ramadan, when large crowds of worshippers were assembled at the shrine of Imam Reza, one of the most revered figures in Shia Islam, the attacker struck.
The Mashhad attack followed the murder of two Sunni clergy in Gonbad-e Kavus.
