Reuters reports that while government loyalists in the Islamic Republic country packed into mosques and squares to pray for Raisi and the country’s Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, who both died in a helicopter crash on Sunday, most shops remained open and the authorities made little effort to interrupt ordinary life and social activities.
Despite that the Iranian authorities on Monday declared five days of mourning for President Ebrahim Raisi’s death, there is a muted atmosphere and furtive celebration that engulfed the country which revealed little of the spectacular public grief the President’s death.
Reuters reports that while government loyalists in the Islamic Republic country packed into mosques and squares to pray for Raisi and the country’s Foreign Minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, who both died in a helicopter crash on Sunday, most shops remained open and the authorities made little effort to interrupt ordinary life and social activities.
It was reported that a year after late President Raisi's hardline government cracked down violently to end the biggest anti-establishment demonstrations since the 1979 revolution, opponents posted furtive videos online of people passing out sweets to celebrate his death.
A 21-year-old student in Tehran, Laila told Reuters on the phone that she was not saddened by Raisi's death, "because he ordered the crackdown on women for hijab."
"But I am sad because even with Raisi's death this regime will not change."
Rights groups reportedly said that hundreds of Iranians died in 2022-2023 demonstrations triggered by the death in custody of a young Iranian Kurdish woman arrested by morality police for violating the country's strict dress codes.
The Iranian authorities' handling of an array of political, social and economic crises have deepened the gap between the clerical rulers and society.
But supporters of the clerical establishment spoke admiringly of the 63-year-old Raisi, a former hardline jurist elected in a tightly controlled vote in 2021.
A 28-year-old member of the volunteer Basij militia in the holy Shi'ite city of Qom, Mohammad Hossein Zarrabi, said, "He was a hard working president. His legacy will endure as long as we are alive."
However, there was little of the emotional rhetoric that accompanied the deaths of publicly revered figures, like Qasem Soleimani, a senior commander of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards killed by a U.S. missile in 2020 in Iraq, whose funeral drew huge crowds of mourners, weeping with sorrow and rage.
For opponents of Iran's clerical rulers at home and in exile, Raisi has been a hate figure since the 1980s when he was blamed for playing a leading role as a jurist in the execution of dissidents.
Meanwhile, Iran has never acknowledged that mass executions took place, despite global human rights organisation Amnesty International saying that 5,000 Iranians, possibly more, were executed in the first decade after the revolution.
An internet user, Soran Mansournia, who posted in an online forum debating the legacy of Raisi's death was quoted as saying, "I congratulate the families of the victims of the executions."
But another user, Narges, reportedly lamented Raisi as having died "a martyr's death".
Many Iranians said they expected that Raisi's death would have little impact on how the country would be ruled, with the establishment likely to replace him with another figure with similarly hardline views.
Reza, a 47-year-old shopkeeper in the central desert city of Yazd who did not give his full name fearing reprisals said, "Who cares. One hardliner dies, another takes over and our misery continues."
Reza added, "We're too busy with economic and social issues to worry about such news."