DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Thousands of Iranians attended a state-sponsored funeral Tuesday for the 400 people killed in the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s. Meanwhile, Iran’s president lashed out at the US and its allies, accusing them of fomenting anti-government protests that have been taking a stand in Iran for over 3 months.
Coffins containing the remains of “unidentified martyrs” were draped with Iranian flags and carried away in mass processions. For many Iranian families, the painful legacy of the fighting lingers as they continue to wait for news of their loved ones who are “missing. “
In January, 250 Iranian infantrymen killed in the 1980-1988 war were buried in ceremonies.
Iran has been rocked by mass protests since mid-September following the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old Iranian Kurd who died after being detained by the country’s police. The protests temporarily turned into calls for the overthrow of the Iranian theocracy. established after the Islamic Revolution of 1979, marking one of the most demanding situations for Iran’s clerical regime in over 4 decades.
At least 507 protesters were killed and more than 18,500 people arrested, according to Human Rights Activists in Iran, an organization that has closely followed the unrest. The Iranian government has not released figures on those killed or arrested.
In the capital, Tehran, Tuesday’s final farewell paid tribute to two hundred infantrymen whose remains were recently discovered on ancient battlefields along the Iraq-Iran border. Funerals were held for two hundred foot soldiers in other towns and cities in Iran. Infantrymen were known and their remains would be buried as “unknown martyrs” at a mass funeral.
From outside Tehran University, trucks full of coffins roamed the streets. Men and women dressed in black crowded into the coffins, many mourning those lost in the bloody war and stalemate unleashed by Saddam Hussein in Iraq and his Baath Party in 1980.
Iran and Iraq sporadically exchange the remains of foot soldiers recovered from a border territory that witnessed the first fighting of the war, which claimed more than a million lives on both sides.
Iranian state TV said the remains buried Tuesday were of foot soldiers killed on four battlefields, adding two locations inside Iraq. In addition to the Iranian flag, many other people also carried photographs of a senior Iranian general, Qassem Soleimani, who killed through a January 2020 US drone strike in Baghdad.
President Ebrahim Raisi and other senior officials attended the ceremonies and congratulated “the martyrs,” saying they help the spirit of the nation, according to news reports.
Speaking at the ceremony, Raisi said the efforts of the nation’s enemies, a reference to the United States and its allies, had tried to “pressure Iran over the recent protests” but had failed. Iranian officials blamed the unrest on their foreign adversaries, adding that the United States and Israel.
“In the recent unrest, the arrogance [of the United States and its allies] manifested itself in full force,” Raisi said, but “any tension opposed to the Islamic Republic is doomed to failure. “
In early December, Iran executed two prisoners, both over the age of 23, charged in connection with the mass protests. The first, Mohsen Shekari, accused before an Iranian court of blocking a street in Tehran and attacking a member of the country’s security forces with a machete.
The moment Majidreza Rahnavard, whose body was left hanging from a crane structure as a terrible warning to others. Authorities alleged that Rahnavard stabbed two members of his paramilitary force. The executions sparked a foreign outcry. There are reports that dozens more remain on the execution list.
Tuesday’s funeral comes days before the third anniversary of the Iranian military’s downing of a Ukrainian passenger jet with two surface-to-air missiles, killing the other 176 people on board, a tragedy that sparked an explosion of unrest across Iran and further severed its relations with the West.
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