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The funeral cortege carrying the coffins of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and four relatives including his 14-month-old granddaughter wound a 10-kilometre route through Tehran this week slowed by vast crowds of mourners in one of the largest public gatherings in years according to BBC News reporting from the Iranian capital. Aerial images showed main arteries packed with loyalists in black chanting signature slogans of death to America and death to Israel while many waved red flags symbolising martyrdom and held English-language posters targeting US President Donald Trump. A government-backed messaging app had urged supporters to adopt phrases such as Our revenge is inevitable and They will pay hard as part of the political spectacle Iranian officials framed around resistance and revenge.
President Masoud Pezeshkian pushed back against Trump’s description of fake tears by stating that tears arise from the pain and sorrow that surges within a person and the world sees this truth in remarks carried by state outlets. One grey-haired participant named Mojtaba approached foreign journalists to declare soon very soon you will see signs of revenge at the top of the White House and soon the colour of the White House will be the colour of my red flag. A government official acknowledged to the BBC that while some calls were ritualistic the anger remained genuine among hardliners opposed to any new accommodation with the United States that they blame for the leader’s death.
Iran’s economy has deteriorated sharply in the background with the International Monetary Fund projecting consumer prices rising 42.4 percent in 2025 and remaining above 40 percent through 2026 while the World Bank forecast an economic contraction in both years alongside inflation heading toward 60 percent. Food price inflation exceeded 70 percent in 2025 according to parliamentary research and the Statistical Center of Iran contributing to widespread merchant closures and protests that spread across all 31 provinces beginning in December 2025. Many Iranians cited these pressures along with the pain of two recent wars as reasons for staying away from the mourning events with one man telling reporters outside a rest station that many people don’t have work and are so unhappy.
Commemorations shift Tuesday to the holy city of Qom south of Tehran before proceeding to Najaf and Karbala in Iraq with final burial scheduled for Thursday at the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad Khamenei’s birthplace. The proceedings sought to portray the late supreme leader as a transcendent religious and political figure whose authority reached across the Shia Muslim world a Tehran University research fellow Mohammad Eslami observed. In contrast Carnegie Endowment fellow Karim Sadjadpour assessed that the revolution he preserved was for a world which no longer exists.
Iran has entered a new era under its third supreme leader 56-year-old Mojtaba Khamenei who was appointed following the strikes that killed his father and left him injured according to profiles by Britannica and France 24. The younger Khamenei has maintained a low public profile since the February events with officials citing ongoing Israeli threats to his safety and his three brothers appeared at the lying-in-state instead. Britannica records note that Mojtaba Khamenei built influence behind the scenes in the Office of the Supreme Leader with ties to the Revolutionary Guard and a reputation tied to past election-related crackdowns though he lacks the clerical rank traditionally expected for the role.
The events recalled the chaotic 1989 state funeral of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini which drew an estimated 10 million mourners or one-sixth of Iran’s population at the time and descended into a deadly stampede that broke the coffin and tumbled the body into the crowd AP News reported. Guinness World Records recognised that turnout as the largest proportion of a population ever to attend a funeral with at least eight deaths and thousands injured in the crush. Iranian planners deployed unprecedented security for the Khamenei ceremonies to avoid repeats of that disorder or the deadly 2020 crush at the funeral of General Qasem Soleimani according to Iran International.
