Iranian Senior Shiite Cleric Is Shot Dead In Babolsar City

On Wednesday, an attacker shot death Ayatollah Abbas Ali Soleimani, an Iranian senior Shiite cleric, at a bank in Babolsar City.

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Confusion persisted hours after the attack. State TV initially reported that Soleimani was at the bank when another man seized a guard’s firearm and began shooting over a personal dispute with an employee. 

State TV later reported that the guard was the one who opened fire and killed the cleric. The Interior Ministry arrested the attacker and launched a special investigation into the murder, whose motive remains unclear. 

Soleimani was a member of the Assembly of Experts, an 88-seat panel that oversees and appoints Iran’s supreme leader. He also was the imam who led the weekly Friday prayers in the Kashan and Zahedan cities.

The 75-year-old cleric had served as the personal representative of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to the province of Sistan and Baluchestan, which shares a border with Pakistan and Afghanistan and has a majority Sunni population.

Extremist groups against Tehran’s Shiite government operate there, along with gangs dedicated to smuggling and drug trafficking activities.

In April 2022, a suspected Sunni extremist stabbed to death two Shiite clerics and injured another in Mashhad city on the influence of the takfiri, a term used for Muslims who brand others as apostates and condemn them to death.