Seven-Day Farewell Begins for Khamenei, Coffin to Be Taken to Karbala

Iran has begun a previously announced seven-day mourning program to bid farewell to its former Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Thousands of mourners gathered after his coffin was brought to Tehran’s Grand Mosalla Mosque.

Officials expect nearly 20 million people to attend Khamenei’s funeral prayers, making it the largest funeral ceremony in Iran’s history.

The mourning period, which began on Friday (July 3), will conclude on Thursday (July 9) with his burial at the Imam Reza Shrine in his hometown of Mashhad.

The funeral and burial ceremonies were initially scheduled for March but were postponed due to the prolonged conflict between Iran and the United States and Israel. Khamenei, 86, was killed on February 28, the first day of the Iran war, in a joint U.S.-Israeli airstrike on his residence, along with several members of his family.

Following the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the Islamic Revolution and Iran’s first Supreme Leader, in 1989, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei assumed the country’s top leadership. While Khomeini was regarded as the ideological force behind the revolution that ended the Pahlavi monarchy, Khamenei focused on building Iran’s military and paramilitary institutions.

The funeral marks the first major state ceremony under the leadership of Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba Khamenei. He has not appeared in public since the outbreak of the U.S.-Israeli war four months ago.