{"id":523831,"date":"2026-07-03T19:58:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T19:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/523831\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T19:58:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T19:58:08","slug":"iran-begins-week-of-funeral-ceremonies-for-slain-supreme-leader-khamenei-us-israel-war-on-iran-news","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/523831\/","title":{"rendered":"Iran begins week of funeral ceremonies for slain Supreme Leader Khamenei | US-Israel war on Iran News"},"content":{"rendered":"

The body of Iran\u2019s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei lies in state in a vast hall in Tehran as top Iranian officials and foreign dignitaries pay their respects, marking the beginning of a week of funeral ceremonies<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Black-clad mourners carried Khamenei\u2019s coffin aloft at the vast Grand Mosalla religious complex in the capital, Tehran, on Friday, with the casket draped with the national flag of the Islamic Republic that he led for more than three decades.<\/p>\n

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Authorities expect public mourning and grand processions to attract millions before Khamenei\u2019s burial<\/a> next week, four months after the 86-year-old leader was killed at his compound on February 28, the first day of a joint United States-Israeli war on Iran.<\/p>\n

Alongside Khamenei\u2019s casket lay those of his three-year-old granddaughter, eldest daughter, son-in-law and daughter-in-law \u2013 all killed in the strike on February 28.<\/p>\n

State TV broadcast footage of Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian paying his respects at Khamenei\u2019s coffin, alongside the parliament speaker and chief negotiator, Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.<\/p>\n

Ahmad Vahidi, head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the ideological arm of the Iranian military, also made his first appearance since the start of the war.<\/p>\n

The funeral was scheduled for March, but was delayed due to the war on Iran.<\/p>\n

Many world leaders<\/a> are also attending the six days of commemoration, with a public ceremony scheduled on Saturday in Tehran, followed by a procession through holy cities in both Iran and neighbouring Iraq.<\/p>\n

Al Jazeera\u2019s Resul Serdar Atas, reporting from Tehran, said the government has not invited several European countries to the funeral, and the \u201cattendees were mostly from either neutral or friendly states\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cAccording to the Foreign Ministry spokesperson, so far more than 50 delegations have already paid their respects to Iran\u2019s late supreme leader,\u201d he said, naming the presidents of Iraq, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Georgia, as well as Pakistan\u2019s Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif.<\/p>\n

\u201cIranians are saying they did not extend invitations to European countries or those who have directly, or indirectly, supported the Israeli and American military campaign on Iran,\u201d Atas said.<\/p>\n

\"ZiyadPalestinian Islamic Jihad chief Ziyad al-Nakhalah at a farewell ceremony for Iran\u2019s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran, July 3, 2026 [Majid Asgaripour\/Reuters]<\/p>\n

Iranian authorities expect millions of people to flood the streets of Tehran starting Saturday, in scenes reminiscent of the 1989 funeral of Khamenei\u2019s predecessor, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, attended by an estimated 10 million people.<\/p>\n

Atas said the authorities expect a higher turnout this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you look at the symbolism of the places \u2014 of course, Tehran is the seat of power in the country \u2014 but the city of Qom is the religious centre, where most of the clerics are being educated. They say at least two million people there are expected to attend,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\u201cThen, of course, Iraq, Najaf and Karbala are extremely important cities for Shia Islam. The final leg of this funeral is going to be Mashhad, which hosts the tomb of the eighth imam of Shia Islam \u2026 Also, Mashhad is the birthplace of the supreme leader,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n

On Friday, the mourners, identified by the state media as relatives of those killed in the 12-day war in 2025 and the recent war, threw scarves and other items for attendants to brush against Khamenei\u2019s coffin, a practice seen as a blessing in Iran.<\/p>\n

The casket was draped with a flag, with white calligraphy on it reading: \u201cYa Hussein\u201d \u2013 a Shia expression in remembrance of the seventh-century martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad\u2019s grandson.<\/p>\n

In Tehran, images of the late Khamenei\u2019s fist could be seen in banners and in a giant statue in Enghelab Square, framed by what appeared to be ballistic missiles flying through the air.<\/p>\n

Abas Aslani, senior research fellow at the Center for Middle East Strategic Studies in Tehran, told Al Jazeera the funeral is taking place at a critical moment for Iran, which is projecting the event as a \u201cdisplay of unity\u201d that carries a message for the US and Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cFollowing the assassination of the supreme leader, the government did not fall but became stronger,\u201d he said. \u201cWhat the US and Israel did backfired. They wanted to bring about regime change in the country, but what actually happened created a rally around the flag.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The body of Iran\u2019s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei lies in state in a vast hall in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":523832,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,87,6605,21453,47,43,5033,7319,40,38,41,39,162198],"class_list":["post-523831","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-iran","tag-iraq","tag-islamic-revolutionary-guard-corps","tag-middle-east","tag-news","tag-obituaries","tag-religion","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-us-israel-war-on-iran"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523831","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=523831"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/523831\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/523832"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=523831"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=523831"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=523831"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}