Tehran, (CBC); July 09, 2026: Multi-day procession shut down streets, airspace across the country. A rectangular coffin with a green top and Persian script is held aloft by a throng of men who reach out to touch it.
The coffin of the late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is carried through a crowd as mourners jostle to reach and touch it outside the Imam Hussein Shrine in Karbala, Iraq, early Thursday.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has been laid to rest months after being killed in the opening salvos of the Iran war.
He ruled Iran for nearly 37 years before being killed in the U.S. and Israeli airstrikes that started the war on Feb. 28. He was laid to rest in his hometown of Mashhad early Friday after days of public mourning.
Khamenei is only the second ruler of the nation to be buried in the city of Mashhad. In 1747, Nader Shah was buried in the city after he was assassinated following nearly 11 years in power.
The funeral processions began on Saturday, with authorities shutting down streets, airspace and daily life in Tehran, Iran’s capital, and other cities, as throngs commemorated the man who led Iran for decades with an iron fist while confronting the West.
Hostilities with the United States burst out again this week despite a truce, with Iran still controlling the vital Strait of Hormuz waterway and proclaiming its victory in having survived a months-long assault by its most powerful enemies.
Iranian authorities are presenting Khamenei’s burial and the huge crowds attending his funeral as evidence of the popularity of their theocratic state and its lasting ideological fire nearly half a century after the 1979 Islamic revolution.
But beneath the surface Iran faces huge internal challenges and the legacy of Khamenei’s 37-year rule is bitterly disputed in a country where large numbers have repeatedly risen up to protest poverty and repression in recent years.
‘Kill Trump’ placards
The whereabouts of Mojtaba Khamenei, proclaimed supreme leader by a clerical assembly a week after his father’s death, has remained a mystery to Iranians.
He has not appeared in public since the war began with the strike that killed Ali Khamenei on Feb. 28, and while he has issued written statements, no image or video or voice recording of him has been issued. He suffered debilitating injuries in that same strike, his face disfigured and limbs badly wounded.
Senior sources in Tehran have said he is recovering but that he has not yet been well enough to manage public appearances, and state security services are also trying to limit his exposure in case of more U.S. attacks.
Hundreds of thousands of mourners pack the streets of Tehran to say their goodbyes to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s late supreme leader killed in a joint attack between the U.S. and Israel back on Feb. 28. The four-day funeral procession takes place against the backdrop of a ceasefire with the U.S. as the two countries look for a permanent end to the war, which delayed the ceremony up until now.
As crowds jostled in Mashhad awaiting Khamenei’s funeral cortège, the crowd chanted slogans demanding revenge on U.S. President Donald Trump for his killing.
“I swear by the blood of the supreme leader, Trump, we will kill you!” they shouted, with women holding up placards reading “Kill Trump.”
The roads leading to the shrine were a sea of black-clad mourners on Thursday, some responding to shouted chants in praise of Khamenei and against Iran’s enemies, including the old revolutionary slogan of “Death to America.”
Analysis
As Trump declares ceasefire over, Iran’s leadership is divided over how it wants the war to end
As the crowds awaited the coffins of Khamenei and his family in the sweltering July heat, hoses pumped water high into the air to spray across the mourners and keep them cool.
Khamenei’s remains, along with those of four family members killed alongside him, have already been paraded through Tehran, the Shia Muslim clerical centre of Qom and the Iraqi shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala.
At each event, huge crowds have thronged the streets to the mournful accompaniment of sung Shia laments and chanted revolutionary slogans.
Martyrdom holds a central place in Shia theology, and Khamenei’s death at the hands of foreign enemies has played into a religious and political tradition that runs deep through the Islamic Republic.
Khamenei’s long rule and disputed legacy
The funeral comes at a critical moment for Iran, turning the page of nearly four decades of Khamenei’s rule and months after the latest round of mass nationwide protests against the Islamic Republic.
Security forces put down that unrest, sparked by anger over the sanctions-throttled economy, by killing thousands of demonstrators in a wave of repression that echoed other bouts of violence over recent years.
While analysts see Iran as having emerged from the war strategically strengthened, with its grip over the vital Strait of Hormuz intact, it has suffered widespread damage that has added to internal economic woes.
A woman in a headdress stands at an elevated position, high above a street running through a city packed with people far into the distance.
The late Khamenei was appointed supreme leader in 1989, a decade after the Islamic revolution, and over the decades he consolidated political, economic and military power in his office.
That effort, which increasingly marginalized the elected president and parliament, was conducted in concert with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which grew in influence throughout Khamenei’s rule.
Mojtaba Khamenei was appointed with the backing of the Guards, who are now seen as the dominant force in Iranian political and strategic thinking.
