by Karen Faulkner, Worthy News Correspondent
(Worthy News) – Five days of official mourning have been instituted to honor Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi who died in a helicopter crash on Monday, but Iran has not seen any mass outpouring of public grief for him.
A brutal hardline Islamist, Raisi was known as the “Butcher of Tehran” for the atrocities and oppression he ordered against his own people, not least dissidents and women.
Many mosques and squares have been filled with government officials and loyalists who gathered to commemorate Raisi, but most shops have remained open in an indication that grief is not widespread, Reuters reported.
After decades of repressive Islamic rule ushered in during the 1979 revolution, civilians have fresh memories of hundreds of Iranians being killed by the government during nationwide protests triggered by the 2022 death in custody of an Iranian woman arrested for not wearing her hijab correctly.
“A year after Raisi’s hardline government cracked down violently to end the biggest anti-establishment demonstrations since the 1979 revolution, opponents even posted furtive video online of people passing out sweets to celebrate his death,” Reuters reported.
In an OpEd for Newsweek, Sheila Nazarian, an Iranian-American surgeon, wrote: “As a woman born in Iran, I feel not just a sense of celebration at the death of this evil man, but of relief. It is a feeling I share with a great many of my countrymen, and—in particular—countrywomen. To understand why, you have to know that Ebrahim Raisi—though robed by his brutal regime with the dignity of ‘President’—was a mass murderer responsible for atrocities and oppression in Iran and across the region. This is why he is known as the ‘Butcher of Tehran.’”
Copyright 1999-2025 Worthy News. This article was originally published on Worthy News and was reproduced with permission.
Latest News from Worthy News
Senate Republicans on Thursday confirmed 48 of President Donald Trump’s executive branch nominees in a single vote, advancing his agenda to fill key government positions after invoking a new rules change last week.
Erika Kirk, the widow of slain born-again Christian conservative activist Charlie Kirk, has been unanimously chosen as the new chief executive officer and chair of the board of Turning Point USA (TPUSA), the influential group her husband founded to rally young Americans behind conservative Christian causes.
Authorities in Indonesia’s Central Java Province have halted construction of a church and related tourism compound after pressure from local council members and Muslim groups amid rising anti-Christian incidents in the world’s largest Muslim-majority nation, sources confirmed Thursday.
A young Christian man is hiding in Pakistan after being falsely accused of making “blasphemous” comments against Islam, an offence that potentially carries the death penalty under the Islamic nation’s strict blasphemy legislation, Worthy News learned Thursday.
France was gripped by a second wave of nationwide strikes on Thursday, as hundreds of thousands marched against austerity measures and looming budget cuts—unrest that not only deepens the political crisis for President Emmanuel Macron and his new prime minister, Sébastien Lecornu, but also unfolds in a season many prophecy watchers view as charged with significance.
The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched a broad wave of strikes Thursday evening against Hezbollah military sites in southern Lebanon, escalating its campaign against the Iranian-backed terror group’s Radwan Force.
Three Israeli divisions continued a steady push into Gaza City on Thursday, the third day of Operation Gideon’s Chariots II, as the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) seek to seize Hamas’ last stronghold in the enclave.