Iran Buries Khamenei as His Successor Is Barred From the Funeral
Iran buried Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad, closing a week of mass processions that drew enormous crowds chanting “we will kill you” at President Trump beneath placards demanding his death. The most telling detail was an absence made official: his son and successor, Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, was kept away from his own father’s burial, with Iranian officials telling reporters he had been barred over fears he could be tracked and assassinated.
For a week the question was why the new supreme leader had not appeared; today it was answered, and the answer is its own kind of crisis — a ruler too exposed to attend the funeral that confirmed his inheritance, in a country trading strikes with the United States. The barring is a security judgement that doubles as a confession of vulnerability: the institution that projects itself as the region’s immovable power cannot safely show its head of state. He was buried alongside family members killed in the same February strike that killed his father. Watch when Mojtaba first appears in public, who speaks for him in the interim, and whether the succession holds under the strain of war.