Jon Gambrell and Nasser Karimi
Updated ,first published
Tehran: Tens of thousands of Iranians gathered at a vast outdoor prayer complex in Tehran on Saturday to view the coffins of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the 86-year-old supreme leader killed at the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran, and his family.
Dressed in black and draped in the red, white and green flags of the Islamic Republic of Iran, mourners held up portraits of Khamenei and his son and successor, Mojtaba.
In a show of public devotion to the Islamic Republic’s theocratic state and revolutionary zeal, Iran is staging a week of mass funeral processions for the supreme leader killed in February by the opening airstrikes of the war.
After a day lying in state indoors for senior Iranian leaders and foreign officials to visit, Khamenei’s coffin was put on display under glass outdoors, along with those of his daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law and 14-month-old granddaughter.
There has still been no public sighting or image released of his son, the new leader, said to have been injured in the same attack.
Mourners filed into the vast courtyard of the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla, beating their chests, wailing and waving banners of the Islamic Republic. Women dressed in black chadors wore white visors or held umbrellas to shield themselves from the hot mid-morning sun.
“Let us wail!” a compere encouraged the crowds through a loudspeaker. Chants of “Death to America” echoed through the huge prayer hall.
Blood feud
“Everyone here has come to avenge the blood of their supreme leader,” said Arash Rahimi, 40, in the crowd. “As our leader has said, we have a blood feud with the United States. Our relations with the United States will never be good.”
The funeral is taking place at a critical moment for Iran, with its clerical rulers, backed by the military, buoyed by having survived the onslaught with their ruling system intact.
The war has been paused for a ceasefire under an agreement with Washington that Iran’s authorities say will ultimately bring huge economic benefits, in line with what they describe as a victory over a superpower.
The Axios news website quoted US President Donald Trump as saying peace talks had been paused for a week for the events surrounding the funeral.
With Iran’s leaders all attending, Washington could take them all out with “one shot”, it quoted Trump as saying: “But we are not going to do that because then we would have nobody to negotiate with.”
Trump also told the news outlet that he was surprised to see some Iranians crying at the funeral, saying he thought people hated Khamenei. “Maybe it’s fake tears,” he said.
Iran’s embassy in Armenia reacted to Trump’s remarks in a post on X: “You don’t understand these things because you have neither civilisation, nor history, nor honour.”
Within Iran, beyond the displays of solidarity with the leadership, it remains impossible to assess how deeply public loyalty runs across a country of 90 million people.
Weeks before the war, hundreds of thousands of Iranians demonstrated against the government in protests that were put down in a violent crackdown in which thousands were killed. But there has been little or no public sign of such dissent since the US and Israeli attacks began.
During the war, more than 3000 people were killed, including many of Iran’s most senior politicians and military commanders. Military bases and major infrastructure projects were destroyed, causing billions of dollars in damage.
But Iran successfully struck American bases in the region, inflicted pain on the Gulf Arab countries that host them, and asserted its control of the Strait of Hormuz, causing a spike in global energy prices, which Trump said led him to push faster for peace.
The interim deal reached last month includes the unfreezing of billions of dollars in Iranian assets held abroad and waivers from financial sanctions that had brought Iran’s economy to its knees.
Shiite martyrdom
In Iran’s theocratic system, Khamenei was not only head of state and leader of a revolutionary movement, but the earthly representative for Shi’ite Islam’s last imam, a holy figure who disappeared in the ninth century.
His death in an enemy attack plays into a long tradition of martyrdom and ritual mourning, dating to the seventh-century death in battle of the Prophet Mohammad’s grandson Hussein, which divided Islam into its Shiite and Sunni branches.
Burials are meant to be conducted within a day of death in Islam, but because of the risks of holding a big funeral during the war, it was postponed until after last month’s interim truce deal was agreed.
Khamenei’s coffin was unveiled late on Thursday. On Friday, it was laid in state in the great prayer hall built to honour his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, where it will remain until Sunday evening.
After what authorities are billing as a massive procession in central Tehran on Monday, the remains will be taken to the seminary city of Qom, the centre of Iran’s Shi’ite hierarchy, for ceremonies on Tuesday.
From there, the body will be flown to Iraq for ceremonies in the two Shiite holy shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala on Wednesday. The body will return to Iran on Thursday for another procession in Mashhad, to be buried near the tomb of another of the medieval Shiite imams.
Authorities plan to mobilise millions of people for big processions over the coming days, offering transport, food and lodging.
Reuters
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