Ayatollah close to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei shot dead in Iran

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

53% : Soleimani also led Friday prayers in Kashan, a central city between Tehran and Isfahan, and in Zahedan, the capital of Sistan Balochistan, a southeastern region populated partly by Sunni Muslims (Iran is a predominantly Shiite country).
49% : Soleimani was a member of the important Assembly of Experts, made up of 88 clerics, which has the prerogative of appointing the supreme leader, supervising his performance and, in theory, dismissing him if he is deemed incapable of carrying out his duties.
38% : The Sistan Balochistan region has a majority Sunni population and extremist groups of that branch of Islam that oppose the Shiite government of Tehran operate there, as well as gangs of smugglers and drug traffickers.

*Our bias meter rating uses data science including sentiment analysis, machine learning and our proprietary algorithm for determining biases in news articles. Bias scores are on a scale of -100% to 100% with higher negative scores being more liberal and higher positive scores being more conservative, and 0% being neutral. The rating is an independent analysis and is not affiliated nor sponsored by the news source or any other organization.