Iran cleric who founded Hezbollah dies of COVID-19

TEHRAN/NEW DELHI: Ali Akbar Mohtashamipour, a Shia cleric, who as Iran's ambassador to Syria, helped found Hezbollah and lost his right hand to a book bombing reportedly carried out by Israel, died on Monday of the coronavirus. He was 74.

A close ally of Iran's late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Mohtashamipour formed alliances with Muslim militant groups across the Mideast in the 1970s. After the Islamic Revolution, he helped found the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard in Iran and as ambassador to Syria, brought the force into the region to help form Hezbollah, reported international media.

In his later years, he slowly joined the cause of reformists in Iran, hoping to change the Islamic Republic's theocracy from the inside. He backed the opposition leaders Mir Hossein Mousavi and Mahdi Karroubi in Iran's Green Movement protests that followed the disputed 2009 re-election of then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. "If the whole people become aware, avoid violent measures and continue their civil confrontation with that, they will win,” Mohtashamipour said at the time, though Ahmadinejad would ultimately remain in office. "No power can stand up to peoples will." Mohtashamipour died at a hospital in northern Tehran after contracting the virus, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.