TEHRAN, Iran — Two days after the death of Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani on Jan. 8, an unexpectedly large number of Iranians took to the streets of Tehran for the funeral of the two-time president and Expediency Council chairman.
The funeral was scheduled to take place at Tehran University at 8:30 a.m., and people began gathering at the venue an hour before the ceremony was slated to begin. The crowd quickly grew so large that police had to shut down a number of streets to prevent an outright stampede.