Iran police seek driver who intentionally ran over Shia cleric

Iranian police are seeking to arrest a driver who intentionally ran over a Shia cleric in the capital Tehran on Wednesday, the same day a senior Shia cleric was shot dead at a bank in northern Iran, state media reported on Thursday.

Citing a statement by the capital’s police, the official IRNA news agency said a 35-year-old cleric was “deliberately” run over by a driver and dragged on the hood of the car for a “long distance.”

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The driver fled the scene and remains at large, IRNA added. The agency did not provide any information regarding the condition of the cleric.

The incident occurred on the same day that a senior Shia cleric, Abbas-Ali Soleimani, was fatally shot at a bank in the city of Babolsar in the northern Mazandaran province.

CCTV footage released by state media showed a bank security officer calmly approaching Soleimani from behind and shooting him dead.

IRNA reported on Thursday that the 50-year-old bank guard, who was arrested for the murder, claims he did not know who Soleimani was and that he had mistakenly believed him to be the brother of a bank employee with whom he had a dispute.

According to IRNA, the guard said that he was motivated by a desire for revenge. Rights groups have repeatedly accused Iran of extracting forced confessions from detainees, particularly in sensitive cases.

“I did not know the victim. But I had heard before that the deputy manager of the bank has a brother. And when the victim entered the bank, I assumed that he was the brother of the deputy manager. I was so angry that I lost my control and decided to take revenge by murdering his brother,” IRNA quoted the guard as saying.

“I have a bad financial situation and I had a dispute with the bank’s deputy manager for some time,” he added.

Soleimani, 75, is the most senior Iranian cleric to be killed in years. He was a member of the Assembly of Experts, a clerical body that supervises, appoints and in theory, can sack the Islamic Republic’s supreme leader.

He was also previously a representative of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei to the restive southeastern province of Sistan-Baluchistan.

Shia clergy hold significant power in Iran, with clerics dominating positions of authority in the country. The supreme leader and the heads of two out of three branches of government are all clerics.

As discontent has grown in Iran, particularly over economic, political, and civil rights issues, some Iranians have expressed anger toward clerics, who they blame for their problems.

Following the months-long protests that were sparked by the death in police custody of Iranian Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini last September, social media was flooded with posts of young Iranians knocking off the turbans of clerics.

Amini, 22, died on September 16 shortly after being arrested by the morality police in Tehran for allegedly breaching the country’s strict dress rules for women. Her death triggered months of nationwide anti-regime protests that eventually subsided due to a deadly crackdown by authorities.

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