Iran will bury former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei at the end of a multi-day funeral
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Iran is burying its slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei on Thursday at the country's shrine, with his son and successor Mojtaba Khamenei still in hiding after being crippled in a strike that killed his father.
The burial in Mashhad in northeastern Iran follows a week of mass funerals, rallies and mourning events that coincided with a resurgence of tensions with the United States following weeks of a truce.
Khamenei's body was carried in a lorry slowly through Mashhad's crowded streets towards the glittering mosque and minarets of the Shrine of Imam Reza, flanked by white-robed clerics walking on either side. Black-clad mourners are pressed into the background, waving Iranian flags, portraits of the late Khamenei and red placards with revolutionary slogans.
As Khamenei's body was flown around Iran and Iraq last week, the Islamic Republic's clerical leaders encouraged large crowds to attend in an effort to highlight the fervor and sanity of their theocracy.
However, despite surviving months of bombing by the United States and Israel, Iran faces major internal challenges and the legacy of Khamenei's 37-year rule is highly contested.
'Kill the Trump posters'
The whereabouts of Mojtaba â Khamenei, declared supreme leader by the clerical body a week after his father's death, remains a mystery to Iranians.
He has not been seen in public since the start of the war with the strike that killed Ali Khamenei in Feb. 28, and while he issued written statements, no picture or video or recorded voice of him was released. He was seriously injured in that strike, his face was deformed and his legs badly injured.
Senior sources in Tehran said he is recovering but not well enough to handle public appearances, and national security officials are also trying to limit his exposure in case of further US attacks.
Hundreds of thousands of mourners lined the streets of Tehran to bid farewell to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's late supreme leader who was killed in a joint US-Israeli attack on Feb. 28. The four-day funeral took place after the end of hostilities with the US as the two countries looked at the war until the war was delayed.
As crowds thronged Mashhad waiting for Khamenei's funeral, the crowd chanted slogans demanding revenge on US President Donald Trump for his assassination.
“I swear on the blood of the supreme leader, Trump, we will kill you!” they shouted, women holding signs reading “Kill Trump.”
The streets leading to the shrine were lined with black-clad mourners on Thursday, some responding to chants praising Khamenei and Iran's enemies, including the old revolutionary slogan “Death to America.”
As crowds waited for the coffins of Khamenei and his family in the sweltering July heat, hoses pumped water up to sprinkle mourners and keep them cool.
Khamenei's remains, along with those of four family members killed alongside him, are already on display in Tehran, the Shia Muslim clerical center of Qom and the Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala.
At each event, large crowds have filled the streets to the accompaniment of Shia mourners chanting and chanting revolutionary slogans.
Martyrdom has a central place in Shia theology, and Khamenei's death at the hands of foreign enemies has played into the Islamic Republic's deep religious and political culture.
Khamenei's long rule and controversial legacy
The funeral comes at a critical time in Iran, turning the page on nearly four decades of Khamenei's rule and months after the latest round of mass protests across the country against the Islamic Republic.
Security forces quashed the protests, fueled by anger over economic sanctions, by killing thousands of protesters in a wave of repression that echoed other episodes of violence in recent years.
Although analysts see Iran emerging from the war as strategically strengthened, with its hold on the crucial Strait of Hormuz, it has suffered major damage that has added to its internal economic problems.
The late Khamenei was appointed supreme leader in 1989, ten years after the Islamic revolution, and over the decades he consolidated political, economic and military power in his office.
That effort, which has consistently undermined the elected president and parliament, was carried out in collaboration with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which grew in influence throughout Khamenei's rule.
Mojtaba Khamenei was elected with the support of the conservatives, who are now seen as a major force in Iran's political and strategic thinking.
