Iran Buries Slain Supreme Leader in Climax of Mass Funeral | Today’s news
DUBAI, July 9 (Reuters) – Iran will bury its slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the country’s holiest shrine on Thursday, with his son and successor Mojtaba Khamenei still hidden from public view after being disfigured in a strike that killed his father.
The funeral in Mashhad, northeastern Iran, follows a week of mass funeral processions, rallies and mourning ceremonies that coincided with a renewed flare-up of conflict with the United States after weeks of a ceasefire.
Khamenei’s body was carried by a truck slowly through the crowded streets of Mashhad toward the gilded dome and minaret of the Imam Reza shrine, flanked on either side by white-turbaned priests. Close behind were black-clad mourners, waving Iranian flags, photographs of the late Khamenei and red banners with revolutionary slogans.
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The funeral will be the culmination of a week of funerals in both Iran and Iraq in which the Islamic Republic’s spiritual leaders have encouraged huge crowds to show off the power and ideological fire of their theocratic state.
Despite surviving a months-long onslaught from its most powerful enemies, the United States and Israel, Iran faces enormous internal challenges, and the legacy of Khamenei’s 37-year rule is bitterly contested.
“Kill Trump” banners appear at the funeral.
The whereabouts of Mojtaba Khamenei, who was declared supreme leader by a clerical assembly a week after his father’s death, remains a mystery to Iranians.
He has not appeared in public since the start of the war with the strike that killed Ali Khamenei on February 28, and although he has issued written statements, no photograph, video or voice of him has been released.
In the same blow, he suffered debilitating injuries, his face was disfigured and his limbs badly injured.
Senior sources in Tehran said he was recovering but not yet well enough to conduct public appearances, and state security services were also trying to limit his exposure in the event of further US attacks.
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As crowds thronged Mashhad to await Khamenei’s funeral procession, the crowd chanted slogans demanding revenge on US President Donald Trump for his killing.
“I swear on the blood of Supreme Leader Trump, we will kill you!” they shouted and the women held up placards reading “Kill Trump”.
The roads leading to the shrine were a sea of black-clad mourners on Thursday, some responding to chants praising Khamenei and against 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 high into the air to spray mourners and keep them cool.
Khamenei’s remains, along with those of four family members killed by his side, have already passed through Tehran, the Shiite Muslim spiritual center of Qom, and the Iraqi shrines of Najaf and Karbala.
At each event, huge crowds thronged the streets to the mournful accompaniment of chanted Shia laments and chanted revolutionary slogans.
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Martyrdom is central to Shiite theology, and Khamenei’s death at the hands of foreign enemies played a role in a religious and political tradition that runs deep in the Islamic Republic.
Khamenei’s long rule and contested legacy
The funeral comes at a critical moment for Iran, turning the page on nearly four decades of Khamenei’s rule and months after the latest round of mass nationwide protests against the Islamic republic.
Security forces quelled unrest sparked by anger over the sanctions-ridden economy, killing thousands of protesters in a wave of crackdowns that echoed other bouts of violence in recent years.
Analysts believe Iran emerged from the war strategically strengthened, with its power over the vital Strait of Hormuz intact, suffering extensive damage that contributed to internal economic woes.
The late Khamenei was appointed supreme leader in 1989, a decade after the Islamic Revolution, and during the decade consolidated political, economic and military power in office.
This effort, which increasingly marginalized the elected president and parliament, was conducted in concert with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, whose influence grew throughout Khamenei’s rule.
Mojtaba Khamenei was appointed with the support of the Guards, who are now considered the dominant force in Iranian political and strategic thinking.
(Writing by Angus McDowall; Editing by Alexander Hudson)
Disclaimer: This story was published from the agency’s news feed without editing the text.
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