Khamenei lies in state in Tehran as Iran begins week of mass funeral ceremonies

DUBAI (Reuters) — The body of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei lay in state in a vast hall in Tehran on Friday as clerics, officials, foreign dignitaries and other mourners paid their respects to Iran’s late Supreme Leader, who was killed in the opening Israeli-American airstrikes of the war against Iran on February 28.

Iran is staging a week of mass funeral processions for Khamenei, who held power for 37 years, in a show of public devotion to the Islamic Republic’s theocratic state and revolutionary zeal.

Khamenei’s body is expected to be taken to Qom, Najaf and Kerbala, the great Shi’ite centres of Iran and Iraq, before being laid to rest on Thursday in Mashhad, home to the country’s holiest pilgrimage shrine.

His coffin was unveiled late on Thursday to a throng of sobbing supporters, swaying and beating their heads in time to a sung lament as flowers were thrown from the bier into the crowd. On Friday, the coffin — and those of family members killed with him — was laid in state in the great prayer hall built to honour his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The funeral is taking place at a critical moment for Iran, where the clerical rulers backed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are riding high from surviving what they saw as an existential war against their greatest and most powerful foes.

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But nearly five decades after the 1979 revolution, and for all the official proclamations of national unity in the run-up to Khamenei’s funeral, the Islamic Republic has rarely been so internally fractured.

Support for the clerical leadership is paper-thin, analysts say, and the new Supreme Leader, Khamenei’s son Mojtaba Khamenei, has not been seen in any new image since being wounded in the strike that killed his father.

Years of crippling sanctions have paralysed the economy as accelerating bouts of mass nationwide protests have been put down by security forces with increasing force — culminating in the killing of thousands of demonstrators in January.

Those deep problems have been brushed aside this week, with the authorities mounting a display of state power and mass support, mobilising what they hope will be millions of mourners to take part in the funeral.

Tehran streets were tightly controlled, with military and police vehicles lining the major roads and police and members of the black-shirted volunteer Basij paramilitary force patrolling on motorbikes. Iran warned the United States and Israel against any attacks during the funeral.

After the coffins arrived on Friday, borne high across the upraised hands of a waiting crowd, they were laid in the prayer hall on a white, stepped dais before a high, intricately tiled, arched recess, flanked by national and black mourning flags.

A black turban, worn by clerics claiming descent from Islam’s Prophet Mohammed, lay on the coffin on a folded chequered scarf, a symbol in Iran of militant revolutionary ideals and solidarity with Palestinians.

Representatives from Russia and China were expected to attend. Top Iraqi, Armenian and Pakistani politicians arrived in Tehran for the funeral.

Families of Hezbollah terror group leader Hassan Nasrallah and senior commander Imad Mughniyeh, close Lebanese allies of Iran killed in Israeli strikes, attended the ceremony.

Iran’s own political leaders — the president, parliament speaker, foreign minister and others — filed in to weep and pray on Friday morning. A group of generals stood saluting in front of the coffin.

In Iran’s theocratic system, Khamenei was not only head of state and leader of a revolutionary movement, but the representative on earth ‌for Shi’ite Islam’s ⁠12th imam, who disappeared in the ninth century.

His death in an enemy attack plays into a powerful Shi’ite tradition of martyrdom and mourning, in which processions of flagellants beat their chests or backs.

That potent symbolism has been evident in the black funeral flags hanging over city streets since his death, referencing the seventh-century martyrdom of Shi’ism’s third imam, Hossein.

In central Tehran overnight, a crowd stood sobbing and chanting, led by a Basij member, as others handed out posters of the late Khamenei.

“God willing, only by avenging his blood, demanding justice for it, and ensuring that our leader’s blood is not left unavenged, can this sorrow of the people be somewhat alleviated,” said Mobina Razaaghi, an 18-year-old student from Isfahan, attending the funeral events with classmates.

Killed alongside Khamenei, and displayed in coffins next to his, were his daughter, son-in-law and baby granddaughter, as well as the wife ​of his son Mojtaba.

Burial was postponed due to war

Burials are meant to be conducted within a day of death in Islam, but because of the risks of holding a big funeral during the war, it was postponed until after last month’s interim truce deal was agreed.

Hotels are offering 50% discounts, schools, mosques and sports halls have been prepared to house mourners, and bus and rail networks are being diverted to serve the main events.

After what authorities are billing as a massive procession in central Tehran on Monday, the remains will be taken to the seminary city of Qom, the centre of Iran’s Shi’ite hierarchy, for ceremonies on Tuesday.

Ceremonies will then be held in Iraq’s ⁠shrine cities of ​Najaf and Kerbala on Wednesday with prominent attendees from Iran’s regional network of Shi’ite proxies.

He will be buried on Thursday, after another ​procession, in Mashhad near the tomb of the Imam Reza, a figure of great devotion in Iran.