Funeral procession in Shiraz for victims of Shah Cheragh

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The city of Shiraz witnessed on Saturday afuneral procession attended by tens of thousands of people for the victims of Wednesday's terrorist attack on the holy shrine of Shah Cheragh. 

Chants against the US, "Israel", Saudi Arabia, and the UK rang through the city by participants for their backing of the Daesh terrorist group (ISIS), as pictures of the victims were held up high alongside demands that those responsible be held accountable. 

The coffins are due to be transported to the city of Mashhad, where the mausoleum of the eighth Shia Imam, Ali ibn Musa al-Reda lies and where the victims will be laid to rest.

On Wednesday, an armed terrorist entered the shrine at approximately 5:45 p.m. local time (14:15 GMT) a little before evening prayers, and by opening fire, killed 13 pilgrims, a woman, and two children in cold blood, leaving at least 40 others wounded. ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack on Wednesday.

According to the police commander of Fars province, the assailant was wounded and taken into custody by security personnel, after which he later succumbed to his wounds. 

The Iranian High Council for Human Rights criticized Western countries and international human rights organizations for ignoring obvious evidence of human rights violations in their country, namely the non-reaction to the recent terrorist attack on their Shah Cheragh shrine. 

Salami to KSA: You will never destabilize our country, we will destabilize yours

Major General Hossein Salami, addressing the procession, spoke that Iran's political and spiritual influence across the region has led the West to provoke unrest inside Iran, which has been fruitless, adding that the US has a long past of attempting to weaken Iran, with the Islamic Republic withstanding inhumane US sanctions.

“The Iranian nation has well-proven that the US cannot do anything,” Major General Salami said, underlining that the Pentagon did not have the courage to respond when the IRGC targeted the US-run Ain al-Assad base in Iraq’s province of Anbar in 2020, after launching a series of attacks to retaliate against the assassination of top Iranian anti-terror commander General Qassem Soleimani.

Major General Salami directed his speech at Saudi Arabia by declaring that "We vow to achieve all of the revolution's goals, until the last drop of our blood, just as we have done in the past", adding: "You will never destabilize our country, we will destabilize yours". 

He further expressed that, “The US wants the Iranian nation to be dependent in order to plunder its natural wealth. It wants the Iranian universities to be shuttered and its public assets torched."

Salami then addressed the rioting students by saying: “My advice to rioting students is: ‘Return to the nation, don’t play into the hands of enemies... Those flouting hijab and harassing veiled women are following the path of enemies. This ominous plot of riots in Iran has been constructed in US command rooms. We will bury US pipedreams in this land. We also warn Saudi rulers to think about the repercussions of their actions,”

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said Thursday that his country "will not allow Iran's national security and interests to become a puppet of terrorists." President Ebrahim Raisi, for his part, announced on the day of the attack that the crime will not go unanswered, calling on "the security services to expose the perpetrators and masterminds behind this terrorist act."