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Al-Monitor – A high-ranking Shiite religious official was killed in Iran on Wednesday. Relatively few details are known about the incident at present.
Abbas Ali Soleimani Esbukalai, 75, was the Friday imam in the city of Kashan in central Iran from 2020 to 2022, and also served on Iran’s Assembly of Experts, the council that appoints the supreme leader of the country. He was shot and killed while in a bank in the city of Babolsar on the Caspian Sea. The assailant was arrested and no motive is yet known, Iran’s official Islamic Republic News Agency reported.
Why it matters: Anti-cleric sentiment is high in Iran amid the ongoing anti-government protests in the country. Iranian protesters burned the home of Iran’s first supreme leader, the late Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in November. Many Iranians have also started knocking turbans off of clergymen’s heads.
Clerics themselves have been attacked since the protests began in September. In December, four clerics were stabbed in the holy city of Qom.
Some of the attacks on the clergy predate the protests, and there were attacks in July and August of last year, according to Iran International.
Know more: In late January, Iranian intelligence services arrested several Sunni clerics after they condemned the government’s brutal crackdown on protesters.
This is a developing story and will be updated.
