Iran’s slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei has been buried at the country’s holiest Shia shrine more than four months after he was killed by a US-Israeli strike on his compound in central Tehran.
State media reported early today that he had been buried in his birthplace of Mashhad at the Shrine of Imam Reza, a vast religious complex with a large golden dome and flanking gilded minarets at the heart of the city.
The burial ceremony was private but followed a week of public mourning and processions that drew huge crowds totalling more than 15 million people, and possibly more than double that according to Iranian estimates.
Khamenei’s oldest son, Mostafa, said the funeral prayer, and a throng of male mourners carried the coffin, painted in the red, white and green of Iran’s flag, inside the shrine.
Imam Reza was one of Shi’ite Islam’s holiest figures and the shrine complex in Mashhad, Khamenei’s hometown, is a centre for pilgrimage. Martyrdom holds a central place in Shi’ite theology, and Khamenei’s death at the hands of foreign enemies has played into a religious and political tradition that runs deep through the Islamic Republic.
Khamenei’s funeral had initially been due to be held in March but was postponed as Iran was plunged into war. The official public funeral proceedings finally began last Saturday when tens of thousands of Iranians gathered at the Grand Mosalla religious complex in Tehran where Khamenei’s coffin was on display.
Invited delegations from Iran’s regional allies Hamas and Islamic Jihad from Gaza, Hezbollah from Lebanon and the Houthis from Yemen were in attendance. An even larger crowd gathered at the mosque the following day.
At least 12 million people thronged the streets of the capital on Monday as the coffin was slowly driven on the back of a truck on a 10km (six-mile) procession to Azadi Square, the vast plaza in western Tehran that has served as the stage for the Islamic Republic’s largest gatherings ever since the 1979 Revolution.
On Tuesday, several hundred thousand people crowded onto the streets of the holy city of Qom for another procession with Khamenei’s coffin, which was then flown to neighbouring Iraq where it was driven on Wednesday through Najaf, the third holiest city in Shia Islam, and Karbala, another city with special status for Shias.
Khamenei’s body arrived on a plane early on Thursday in Mashhad, to be transferred to a truck for the final cortege of the funeral. As with the previous processions, the coffins of the four family members killed alongside him in the air strike that began the war were also taken through the streets.
Black-clad mourners pressed in close behind, waving Iranian flags, photographs of the late Khamenei and red placards with revolutionary slogans.The mourners also chanted slogans demanding vengeance against US President Donald Trump for his role in the assassination.
For the final stretch of the procession, the crowds were so thick that the truck was unable to pass through, so Khamenei’s coffin was taken by helicopter to the Imam Reza shrine where he had requested to be buried.
Khamenei’s Successor Absent From Funeral
One person apparently absent from the funeral events, however, was Khamenei’s son and successor as Supreme leader, Mojtaba, who has not been seen in public since the attack on February 28 that killed his father and signalled the start of the US-Israeli war against Iran.
The whereabouts of Mojtaba Khamenei, proclaimed Supreme Leader by a clerical assembly in early March, a week after his father’s death, has remained a mystery to Iranians.He has not appeared in public since the war began. While he has made written statements, no image, video or voice recording of him has been issued.He suffered debilitating injuries in the strike that killed his father, his face disfigured and limbs badly wounded.
Senior sources in Tehran have said he is recovering but that he has not yet been well enough to manage public appearances. State security services are also trying to limit his exposure in case of more US attacks.
The United States and Iran signed a preliminary deal on June 17 intended to halt the fighting while the two sides negotiated an agreement to end the war for good, but the ceasefire has only partially held, with both sides trading attacks on several occasions.
US forces attacked targets in Iran on two consecutive nights, and Trump declared at a summit of NATO leaders in Ankara on Wednesday that the ceasefire deal was over. Iran responded to the US air strikes by firing missiles and drones at US-linked targets in Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar and Jordan.
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