Iran's late president Raisi laid to rest in home city of Mashhad

Iran's late president Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a helicopter crash last weekend, was laid to rest in his home city of Mashhad on Thursday.

Raisi was buried next to the mausoleum of the eighth Shiite Imam Reza in Mashhad, state broadcaster IRIB reported. It is considered the most important Shia shrine in Iran.

Three million people attended the funeral ceremony in Mashhad, according to the state news agency IRNA. There were no independent estimates of the size of the crowd.

Raisi and his foreign minister Hossein Amirabdollahian were among those killed in the helicopter crash in the north-west of the country on Sunday.

Amirabdollahian's funeral took place on Thursday in Tehran. The Iranian state news agency ISNA said the burial was held in the Shah Abdol-Azim Shrine in the south of the capital.

Prior to this, there was another state-organized funeral service for the president in his home region of Khorasan, where tens of thousands took part.

The provincial capital of Birjand was chosen as the penultimate stop of the funeral ceremonies because Raisi had a special relationship with the city, explained Vice President Mohsen Mansouri. Raisi also represented Birjand on the Assembly of Experts, an influential clerical body in Iran.

On Wednesday, a similar funeral service was held in the capital Tehran, which was also attended by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

After the religious ritual at Tehran University, there was also a ceremony with foreign representatives who had travelled to Tehran. In addition to the emir of Qatar, Egypt's foreign minister, the head of Hamas and the chairman of the Russian Duma paid their last respects to the late president.

The absence of the last three Iranian presidents caused a stir. Mohammad Khatami (1997-2005), Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (2005-13) and Hassan Rowhani (2013-21) were allegedly not invited to the funeral ceremony because they had harshly criticized Raisi and his arch-conservative stance course on several occasions.

Raisi's successor is due to be elected on June 28.

According to observers, the country's moderate politicians are once again likely to be excluded in the run-up to the election. It is therefore expected that a candidate from the arch-conservative camp will once again win the race.

The favourite is Raisi's deputy Mohammad Mokhber, who is also acting as interim president until the election. As a close confidant of Raisi, Mokhber is very likely to continue his policies. There is little hope among Iranians that there will be political change under him - or under another arch-conservative president.

While government supporters mourned Raisi's death, critics in Iran pointed to the cleric's past. During his time as prosecutor general in 1988, he was held responsible for the execution of numerous dissidents. He also took a hard line as president - especially against women and their social rights.

Raisi and Amirabdollahian were killed in the crash with seven other occupants of the ill-fated helicopter. They went down in dense fog in the mountains while travelling back from a meeting with Ilham Aliyev, the president of neighbouring Azerbaijan.

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ordered five days of national mourning, and a nationwide holiday was held on Wednesday.