Tehran
Supreme Leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei has appointed Vice-president Mohammad Mokhber as head of the Executive.
The Supreme Leader announced the appointment on Monday, a day after President Ebrahim Raisi and his accompanying team were martyred in a helicopter crash in the northwestern province of East Azerbaijan.
Ayatollah Khamenei issued a message of condolence, in which he said that Mokhber will take over the Executive based on Article 131 of the Iranian Constitution. He also tasked Mokhber and head of the two other branches of the Iranian government, namely the judiciary chief and parliament speaker, to prepare for elections to choose a new president within 50 days at most.
No disruption in administration of country
In an emergency cabinet meeting on Monday, Mokhber called on members of the cabinet to continue working as confidently and strongly as before to serve the people.
He said that the country’s system is well-established and strong, and there will be not be the smallest problem in administration of the country.
The cabinet, at its emergency session, decided to set up a committee tasked with holding funeral processions for the late president and his entourage. The committee is headed by Raisi’s deputy for executive affairs Mohsen Mansouri.
The cabinet also decided to choose a caretaker foreign minister and a governor for East Azerbaijan province as soon as possible.
President Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, East Azerbaijan’s governor and six more people were on board a helicopter when it crashed in Varzaqan region of the province on Sunday.
Their aircraft and two other copters were en route to Tabriz City hours after Raisi, along with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev, inaugurated the joint Qiz Qalasi Dam at the border between the two countries earlier on Sunday.
Elected in 2021, Raisi served as the eighth president of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
Meanwhile Hojjatoleslam Mahmoud Hosseini, the director of a local office of Iran’s Islamic Propagation Organization in Tabriz, has said that the bodies of President Ebrahim Raisi and his colleagues are still in Tabriz and a funeral will be held in the northwestern city before transferring the body of the President to Tehran.
Hosseini told IRNA correspondent on Monday that the bodies will be kept in Tabriz cemetery tonight, noting that in a funeral procession on Tuesday, the people of Tabriz will bid farewell to the president and carry his body to the Tabriz airport.
He added that Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei will say prayers on the body of the president on Wednesday and he will be laid to rest a day later in his hometown Mashhad.
A ceremony is currently underway in downtown Tehran where a large crowd of Raisi’s lovers are mourning his martyrdom.
President Raisi was returning from a ceremony to open a dam on Iran’s border with Azerbaijan on Sunday when his helicopter crashed in Varzaqan, northwestern Iran, on Sunday.