Iran President invites PM Modi to Ayatollah Khamenei’s funeral next month

3 min readNew DelhiUpdated: Jun 24, 2026 03:47 PM IST

Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian last met on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia, in October 2024. (ANI/AP Photos)

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi to attend the multi-city state funeral for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in a joint US-Israeli strike on February 28. The funeral will be held in July.

As per sources, the formal invite was sent to the Ministry of External Affairs (MEA) on Tuesday by the Iranian Embassy in New Delhi. The embassy received the invite two days ago.

The funeral ceremonies will begin in Tehran on July 4 and conclude with Khamenei’s burial in his hometown, Mashhad, on July 9.

Khamenei, 86, was killed in a joint US-Israeli airstrike on his compound in February. His burial was initially scheduled for March, but was postponed as the war dragged on.

PM Modi is among a host of world leaders who have received formal invitations on behalf of President Pezeshkian, including those from China, Russia, Qatar, France, and Pakistan. On Friday, Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif had announced that a Pakistani delegation would attend Khamenei’s funeral.

India yet to decide on representation

PM Modi’s last official bilateral visit to Iran was in May 2016, when he met Khamenei and then President Hassan Rouhani to sign a trilateral agreement to develop Chabahar Port. Two years later, in February 2018, President Rouhani travelled to India at the invitation of PM Modi and visited New Delhi and Hyderabad.

Modi and Pezeshkian had last met on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia, in October 2024, during which PM Modi had invited Pezeshkian to visit India.

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Sources in New Delhi said that India is yet to decide on its representation for the state funeral programme. In 2024, after the deaths of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in a helicopter crash, then Vice-President Jagdeep Dhankhar had visited Tehran to represent India.

He led the Indian delegation at the official memorial and condolence ceremony, along with senior MEA officials. While PM Modi had expressed his condolences in a post on X, India had also declared a one-day state mourning on May 21, 2024.

India formally condoled Khamenei’s death on March 5. Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri had visited the Iranian Embassy in New Delhi to sign the official condolence book.

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Divya A reports on travel, tourism, culture and social issues - not necessarily in that order - for The Indian Express. She's been a journalist for over a decade now, working with Khaleej Times and The Times of India, before settling down at Express. Besides writing/ editing news reports, she indulges her pen to write short stories. As Sanskriti Prabha Dutt Fellow for Excellence in Journalism, she is researching on the lives of the children of sex workers in India. ... Read More

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Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Iran War

Narendra Modi

US-Israel