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The body of late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei lies in state in Tehran’s main hall as Iranian officials and foreign ministers pay their respects, marking the start of the summit. the week of funeral rites.
Black-clad mourners carried Khamenei’s coffin aloft at the Grand Mosalla shrine in the capital Tehran on Friday, with the casket bearing the flag of the Islamic Republic he led for more than three decades.
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Officials had hoped that public outcry and mass demonstrations would draw millions earlier Installation of Khamenei next week, four months after the assassination of the 86-year-old leader in his home on February 28, the first day of the United States-Israel war on Iran.
Next to Khamenei’s coffin were his three-year-old granddaughter, eldest daughter, son-in-law and daughter-in-law – all of whom were killed in the February 28 demonstration.
State television broadcasts of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian paying his respects at Khamenei’s casket, along with parliament speaker and chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.
Ahmad Vahidi, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Iran’s armed forces, made his first public appearance since the start of the war.
The funeral was supposed to take place in March, but was delayed because of the war in Iran.
Most of them the leaders of the world There are also six days of commemoration, with a public ceremony planned for Saturday in Tehran, followed by processions through holy cities in Iran and neighboring Iraq.
Al Jazeera’s Resul Serdar Atas, from Tehran, said the government did not invite several European countries to the funeral, and “most of the attendees were from neutral or friendly countries”.
“According to the spokesman of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, so far more than 50 delegations have already paid their respects to the late supreme leader of Iran,” he said, citing the presidents of Iraq, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Georgia, as well as Pakistan’s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.
“The Iranian people say they have not invited European countries or those who have directly, or indirectly, supported the Israeli-American war in Iran,” Atas said.
Iranian officials expect millions of people to flood the streets of Tehran from Saturday, in scenes reminiscent of the 1989 funeral of Khamenei’s predecessor, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which was attended by about 10 million people.
Atas said the government officials are hoping that more people will come this year.
“If you look at the landmark – of course, Tehran is the seat of power in the country – but the city of Qom is a religious center, where many leaders are trained.
“Then, Iraq, Najaf and Karbala are the most important cities for Shia Islam. The final stage of this funeral will be Mashhad, where the tomb of the eighth imam of Shia Islam is located…
On Friday, mourners, identified by state media as relatives of those killed in the 12-day war in 2025 and the latest war, threw scarves and other objects for the audience to disturb Khamenei’s coffin, a practice seen as a blessing in Iran.
The box was wrapped in a flag, written in white: “Ya Hussein” – a Shia word commemorating the martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad’s grandson in the seventh century.
In Tehran, images of the late Khamenei’s fist can be seen on billboards and on a large statue in Enghelab Square, made of what appear to be rockets flying through the air.
Abas Aslani, a senior researcher at the Center for Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran, told Al Jazeera that the funeral is taking place at a critical time in Iran, which shows that the event is a “show of solidarity” that has a message for the US and Israel.
“Following the assassination of the great 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 happened made people circle the flag.”
