Iran Stages Week of Mass Mourning to Bury Khamenei
Iran will spend the coming week burying Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader killed in the war’s opening strikes in February, with a mass procession through Tehran on Monday and burial in Mashhad on Thursday. The bodies of family members killed alongside him will be carried in the processions, and dignitaries from Russia and China attend condolence ceremonies on Friday. Qom’s Friday prayer leader, Ayatollah Mohammad Saidi, said the turnout “will, in effect, be another referendum for the Islamic Republic”.
No supreme leader had ever been killed by a foreign power in the Islamic Republic’s 47-year history, and the regime is mobilising millions of mourners as a demonstration that the state emerged from the war intact. The display cuts both ways: winter’s inflation protests saw crowds chanting against Khamenei before being violently suppressed, and the authorities know attendance will be read as a measure of legitimacy. His son and successor Mojtaba, wounded in the same strike, has not appeared in new imagery since the war began. Watch for his first public appearance during the rites — and note the Doha talks are paused until they end.