In the small hours of Friday, police roadblocks, stalls, posters, and army vans began appearing across Tehran as millions of Iranians prepared to attend the long-delayed six-day funeral ceremony for Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader for 36 turbulent years. Khamenei was killed at age 86 in the opening salvo of the US-Israeli attack on the country in February, and the final farewell ceremony is intended to be an epic display of personal mourning, national power, resilience, and social cohesion.
Mourning and display of national power
By Thursday, knots of mourners carrying flags and blankets were already gathering along roads festooned with banners showing the red fist, the symbol of the funeral, alongside the slogan: “We must rise.” Many were heading to special hostels being set up across Tehran for the pilgrims. In Revolution Square, a giant statue of a clenched fist was being installed. At an indoor ceremony late on Thursday dedicated to the families of those killed in the war, Khamenei’s coffin was displayed for the first time, and the emotion poured out as the crowds pushed forward, throwing scarves for attendants to brush against the coffin.
Gen Ahmad Vahidi, the commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), broke cover for the first time since 8 February. He had been instrumental in crushing the January protests and also had a hand in the asymmetric warfare strategy that allowed the Iranian government to claim that its military survival in the 40-day war was a great diplomatic victory. Later, the body was taken across Tehran to the vast Grand Mosalla mosque, carried high out of a van across a sea of hands into the Great Hall, where it is to lie for three days.
Scale and international dimension
The scale of the funeral has been conceived to relay political and religious messages of resistance to the rest of the world. As many as 30 million people may attend. At the request of Iraqi politicians, Khamenei’s body will also be carried through the Iraqi Shia cities of Kerbala and Najaf. On Friday, Iran’s thinned-out political, judicial, and military establishment paid their respects as the coffin was covered with the sacred flag of the shrine of Imam Husayn. Mohsen Rezaee, a senior IRGC commander, cried openly, while the president, Masoud Pezeshkian, shed a tear.
The sight of the tiny coffin of Khamenei’s 14-month-old granddaughter, killed in the same blast that killed him along with three other family members, reflected the personal cost of war. A collection of foreign dignitaries then entered the mosque, but their station reflected Iran’s historical isolation from regional leaders. Leaders from Iraq, Pakistan, Armenia, and Tajikistan attended at the most senior levels, as did 12 heads of parliament, mainly from Arab states. No western leaders were invited. Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, accused European countries of standing on the “wrong side of history” and called their stance on the US-Israeli attacks on Iran “truly shameful.”
Security and political challenges
For the funeral organisers, the true test comes over the next three days as ordinary Iranians are asked to show their respects not just to a leader, but to the Islamic Revolution. The context of an uncompleted war with the US and Israel poses security threats from terrorism and crowd control. The burials of the first supreme leader, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, in 1989 and the IRGC leader Qassem Suleimani in 2020 were marked by chaos, with the body of Khomeini nearly lost as crowds pressed forward tearing at his shroud.
Iran’s first vice-president, Mohammad Reza Aref, who is the lead funeral organiser, said the ceremony, which begins on Saturday in Tehran and will end with Khamenei’s burial on Thursday in Mashhad, would be “the most important event of this century” and the most attended event in Iran since the 1979 revolution. Throughout Friday, Iran’s leadership increasingly drove home the message of resistance to the west, and even revenge. Vahidi vowed Iran would never surrender. Khamenei, he said, “has a place in our hearts and souls, and for all of us, for our beloved Iran, and for the Islamic nation, he is permanent and eternal, and we will never say goodbye to him.” The head of the judiciary told western leaders to open their history books. Other hardline MPs spoke of blood vengeance, not mourning.
Absence of successor Mojtaba Khamenei
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator and speaker of the still-suspended parliament, said: “We must rise up and convey the nation’s call for bloodshed to the world so that the world knows that the honourable and noble nation of Iran will not remain silent in the face of oppression and arrogance and will not spare the blood of its imam. Iran stands on the threshold of creating one of the greatest scenes in its history, a day when a nation, with hearts full of love, loyalty and the pain of separation, comes to bid farewell to a great man.” Nevertheless, there remains a great absence and question mark about the coming days. Despite the many posters of Khamenei’s son and successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, walking with his father in a garden, projecting continuity, Mojtaba is not expected to make an appearance at his father’s funeral. He was severely injured in the same US-Israeli strike on a government residence in Tehran at a little after 8am local time on 28 February that killed many of his family.
The extent of Mojtaba’s injuries is unknown, and he has so far issued only written statements, including one that distanced himself from the ceasefire negotiations but sanctioned their continuation. Israel’s defence minister, Israel Katz, threatened to kill him this week, saying he was marked for death – remarks that prompted hardliners to call for a re-examination of Iran’s fatwa against possession of nuclear weapons. His physical absence, as rival political factions claim his support and inflation soars, is putting Iran’s flexible yet secretive political system under great strain. But this is a government that has shown a surprising capacity for resistance and renewal, which it wants the west to see as Iranians bid their farewells.
Procession and symbolic timing
A 6 mile (10km) procession through central Tehran is planned for Monday from Imam Hossein Square to Azadi Square, the site of the 1979 revolution that ultimately led to the establishment of the Islamic Republic that Khamenei led after Khomeini’s death in 1989. The funeral organisers, aware that a glorification of Khamenei’s life without any acknowledgment of the current economic suffering of millions of Iranians could provoke a backlash, have put up posters proclaiming “a bright future for Iran.” The funeral date coincides with Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar, a time when Shia Muslims congregate to commemorate the seventh-century martyrdom of Husayn ibn Ali, the grandson of the prophet Muhammad, who refused to pledge allegiance to the Umayyad caliph Yazid I, a ruler he regarded as tyrannical. The parallels with Khamenei’s own death resisting the west are self-evident.
In one of his last speeches, on 17 February, Khamenei referenced this Shia symbol of defiance, saying: “Someone like me does not pledge allegiance to someone like Yazid. A nation with the culture of Iran does not pledge allegiance to corrupt leaders like those in America.”
