Iran holds mass funeral prayer for slain supreme leader

A mass funeral prayer was held in Iran’s capital, Tehran, on Sunday for the country’s late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei at Imam Khomeini Mosalla Mosque.

The funeral ceremony for Khamenei and his family members drew hundreds of thousands of mourners, many of whom arrived at the venue in the early hours of the morning carrying Iranian flags.

The prayer at the major prayer complex was led by Ayatollah Jafar Sobhani.

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, senior military and political officials, and religious figures were among those attending the ceremony.

Khamenei was killed in US-Israeli strikes on Iran that began on Feb. 28 and were followed by Iranian retaliation.

The funeral ceremonies officially began Friday, with foreign leaders and official delegations from across the region and beyond paying tribute to the late Iranian supreme leader.

According to the official schedule, public farewell ceremonies will be followed by the main funeral procession in Tehran on Monday.

The funeral rites will then move to Qom on July 7.

On July 8, ceremonies are scheduled in Iraq, including in Baghdad, Najaf and Karbala, where the body will be received by religious and political figures before being transferred to major Shia shrines.

The final funeral and burial ceremony is scheduled for July 9 at the Imam Ali Reza Shrine in the northeastern city of Mashhad, one of Shia Islam’s holiest sites.

Mass grief in Iran at Khamenei funeral after US, Israel war killing

Tens of thousands of Iranians thronged a vast outdoor prayer complex in Tehran on Saturday to view the coffins of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the 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.

A girl shouts slogans during a public farewell ceremony for late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla, in Tehran, Iran. Photo: Reuters

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 the 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,” Arash Rahimi, 40, told Reuters 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.

Read: ‘Revenge’ chants at funeral rites for Khamenei

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 civilization, nor history, nor honor.”

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 3,000 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.

Read more: Defiant Iran unveils Khamenei’s coffin to a sea of mourners

But Iran successfully struck US 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.

Shi’ite 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 Shi’ite 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.

Also read: Iranians flock to week-long funeral rites for Khamenei

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 Shi’ite holy shrine cities of Najaf ​and Kerbala 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 mediaeval Shi’ite imams.

Authorities plan to mobilise millions of people for big processions over the coming days, offering transport, food and lodging.