The body of Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei lies in state in a vast hall in Tehran as top Iranian officials and foreign dignitaries pay their respects, marking the beginning of a week of funeral ceremonies.
Black-clad mourners carried Khamenei’s coffin aloft at the vast Grand Mosalla religious complex in the capital, Tehran, on Friday, with the casket draped with the national flag of the Islamic Republic that he led for more than three decades.
Recommended Stories
list of 4 itemsend of list
Authorities expect public mourning and grand processions to attract millions before Khamenei’s burial next week, four months after the 86-year-old leader was killed at his compound on February 28, the first day of a joint United States-Israeli war on Iran.
Alongside Khamenei’s casket lay those of his three-year-old granddaughter, eldest daughter, son-in-law and daughter-in-law – all killed in the strike on February 28.
State TV broadcast footage of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian paying his respects at Khamenei’s coffin, alongside the parliament speaker and chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.
Ahmad Vahidi, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the ideological arm of the Iranian military, also made his first appearance since the start of the war.
The funeral was scheduled for March, but was delayed due to the war on Iran.
Many world leaders are also attending the six days of commemoration, with a public ceremony scheduled on Saturday in Tehran, followed by a procession through holy cities in both Iran and neighbouring Iraq.
Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar Atas, reporting from Tehran, said the government has not invited several European countries to the funeral, and the “attendees were mostly from either neutral or friendly states”.
“According to the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, so far more than 50 delegations have already paid their respects to Iran’s late supreme leader,” he said, naming the presidents of Iraq, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Georgia, as well as Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
“Iranians are saying they did not extend invitations to European countries or those who have directly, or indirectly, supported the Israeli and American military campaign on Iran,” Atas said.
Iranian authorities expect millions of people to flood the streets of Tehran starting Saturday, in scenes reminiscent of the 1989 funeral of Khamenei’s predecessor, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, attended by an estimated 10 million people.
Atas said the authorities expect a higher turnout this year.
“When you look at the symbolism of the places — of course, Tehran is the seat of power in the country — but the city of Qom is the religious centre, where most of the clerics are being educated. They say at least two million people there are expected to attend,” he said.
“Then, of course, Iraq, Najaf and Karbala are extremely important cities for Shia Islam. The final leg of this funeral is going to be Mashhad, which hosts the tomb of the eighth imam of Shia Islam … Also, Mashhad is the birthplace of the supreme leader,” he added.
On Friday, the mourners, identified by the state media as relatives of those killed in the 12-day war in 2025 and the recent war, threw scarves and other items for attendants to brush against Khamenei’s coffin, a practice seen as a blessing in Iran.
The casket was draped with a flag, with white calligraphy on it reading: “Ya Hussein” – a Shia expression in remembrance of the seventh-century martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson.
In Tehran, images of the late Khamenei’s fist could be seen in banners and in a giant statue in Enghelab Square, framed by what appeared to be ballistic missiles flying through the air.
Abas Aslani, senior research fellow at the Center for Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran, told Al Jazeera the funeral is taking place at a critical moment for Iran, which is projecting the event as a “display of unity” that carries a message for the US and Israel.
“Following the assassination of the supreme leader, the government did not fall but became stronger,” he said. “What the US and Israel did backfired. They wanted to bring about regime change in the country, but what actually happened created a rally around the flag.”
