Iran Shuts Down for Two Days Ahead of Khamenei Procession
Iran’s government has shut the country down today and tomorrow to swell the mass procession that will carry Ayatollah Khamenei’s coffin through Tehran on Monday, the centrepiece of a funeral week ending with burial in Mashhad on Thursday. Crowds at the lying-in-state chanted threats against President Trump and Israel’s prime minister beneath banners promising revenge. Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has still not been seen in public through the funeral’s first two days.
A national shutdown converts mourning into mobilisation: Monday’s procession is designed to produce the crowd images the government needs as proof of legitimacy, months after protests were crushed and weeks into a truce many Iranians resent. The messaging is deliberately double — continuity and revenge — while the practical reality is a regime pausing its own confrontation with Washington until the burial. Mojtaba’s absence from his father’s own funeral rites, four months into his succession, remains the most closely-watched detail in the country. Watch Monday’s turnout, and whether the new supreme leader finally appears at the procession or burial.