Iran braces for millions as Ali Khamenei’s 6-day funeral begins
By The Guardian, July 3, 2026In the small hours of Friday, July 3, the police roadblocks, stalls, posters and army vans were starting to appear across Tehran as millions of Iranians prepared to attend the long-delayed six-day funeral ceremony for Ali Khamenei’s, Iran’s supreme leader for 36 turbulent years.
Killed in the opening salvo of the US-Israeli attack on the country in February, the funeral is intended to be an epic display of personal mourning, national power, resilience and social cohesion.
Small groups of mourners carrying flags were gathering along the roads festooned with the red fist, the symbol of the funeral alongside the slogan “We must rise”. At a ceremony dedicated to the families of martyrs, Khamenei’s coffin was displayed.
Iran’s first vice-president, Mohammad Reza Aref, who is the lead funeral organiser, described the ceremony, which begins on Saturday in Tehran and will end with Khamenei’s burial on Thursday in Mashhad, as “the most important event of this century” and the most attended event since the 1979 revolution.
Messages during the burial
The funeral’s scale has been conceived to relay political and religious messages of resistance to the rest of the world.
The former supreme leader’s body, at the request of Iraqi politicians, will also be carried through the Iraqi Shia cities of Karbala and Najaf.
Despite the many posters of Khamenei’s son and successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, walking with his father in a garden, projecting continuity, Mojtaba is not expected to make an appearance at his father’s funeral.
He was severely injured in the same US-Israeli strike on a government residence in Tehran at a little after 8am local time on 28 February that killed many of his family.
How Khamenei was killed
It killed Ali Khamenei, his daughter and her husband, Mojtaba’s wife and his 14-month-old daughter.
The extent of Mojtaba’s injuries are unknown and he has so far issued only written statements, including one that distanced himself from the ceasefire negotiations, but sanctioned their continuance.
Israel’s defence minister Israel Katz threatened to kill him this week, saying he was marked for death, remarks that prompted hardliners to call for a re-examination of Iran’s fatwa against possession of nuclear weapons.
Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s chief negotiator and speaker of the still suspended parliament, said in an eve-of-funeral message: “We must rise up and convey the nation’s call for bloodshed to the world so that the world knows that the honourable and noble nation of Iran will not remain silent in the face of oppression and arrogance and will not spare the blood of its imam.
“Iran stands on the threshold of creating one of the greatest scenes in its history, a day when a nation, with hearts full of love, loyalty and the pain of separation, comes to bid farewell to a great man.”
The public funeral will begin on Saturday – as the US marks the 250th anniversary of its declaration of independence – at Tehran’s Grand Mosalla mosque, where Khamenei’s body will lie in state alongside the bodies of his relatives.
The vast mosque complex has hosted many state religious ceremonies.
All week, workers have been redecorating the vast building and there has been a heavy police presence around the area. The funeral had been planned for early March but the war with US and Israel precluded such a large gathering.
A separate ceremony is scheduled on Friday for foreign leaders.
Ali Akbar Pourjamshidian, the secretary of the national funeral and farewell committee, estimated that representatives from about 30 countries would attend the ceremony, but said no leaders from Europe or the US had been invited.
Iran’s foreign ministry spokesperson, Esmail Baghaei, has accused European countries of standing on the “wrong side of history” and called their stance on the US-Israeli attacks on Iran “truly shameful”.