Iran begins week of mourning ceremonies as Ali Khamenei sleeps in state in Tehran

The remains of Iran’s deceased Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei lay in state Friday in a huge auditorium in Tehran as clerics, officials, foreign ​dignitaries and other mourners paid their condolences.

Iran is marking a week of huge funeral processions for Khamenei, whose 37-year reign was ended in February by the war’s first airstrike, in a demonstration of public loyalty to the Islamic Republic’s theocratic regime and revolutionary zeal.

Khamenei’s body was to be taken to Qom, Najaf and Kerbala, the great Shi’ite centres of Iran and Iraq, before being buried on Thursday in Mashhad, site to the country’s greatest pilgrim shrine.

CRUCIAL TIME FOR ISLAMIC REPUBLIC

Flowers were tossed from the bier into the audience as his casket was opened to a swarm of grieving followers swaying and beating their heads in tune to a sung lament on Thursday night. On Friday the casket and those of family members slain with him, were put in state in the grand prayer hall erected to memorialize his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The burial comes at a crucial time in Iran, where the religious rulers backed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are riding high from surviving what they viewed as an existential fight against their largest and most powerful rivals.

Authorities are hoping to organize millions of people for the large processions over the coming days and are providing transport, food and lodging to help boost numbers.

Yet almost 50 years after the 1979 revolution, and despite all the official pronouncements of national unity on the eve of Khamenei’s funeral, the Islamic Republic has seldom seemed so divided at home.

Analysts claim religious leadership support is wafer thin, and the new Supreme Leader, Khamenei’s son Mojtaba Khamenei, has not been shown in any new photograph since being injured in the strike that killed his father.

Years of crushing sanctions have paralyzed the economy, while growing outbreaks of major nationwide rallies have been put down by security forces with increasing brutality, culminating in the killing of thousands of demonstrators in January.

The core difficulties were swept aside this week as the authorities put on a show of state authority and broad support.

Tehran streets were under tight control, with military and police vehicles guarding the main roads and police and members of the black-shirted volunteer Basij paramilitary organization patrolling on motorbikes. Iran ​threatened the U.S. and Israel with attacks during the funeral.

The coffins, arriving on Friday, were carried high above the upraised hands of an expectant throng and then laid in the prayer hall on a white, stepped dais before a high, beautifully tiled, arched recess, flanked by national and black mourning flags.

The coffin bore a black hat, worn by clerics who say they descend from Islam’s Prophet Mohammed, and a folded checkered scarf, a sign in Iran of strong revolutionary beliefs and solidarity with Palestinians.

Among foreign leaders and officials attending were former Russian President Dmitry ⁠Medvedev, Chinese National People’s Congress deputy chairman He Wei, Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif and Iraqi President Nizar Amedi.

The ceremony was attended by families of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and senior commander Imad Mughniyeh, close Lebanese supporters of Iran, who were murdered in Israeli bombings.

Iran’s own political leaders — the president, parliament speaker, foreign minister and others — poured in to grieve and pray Friday morning. A group of generals saluting stood before the casket. Among them was the new chief of the Revolutionary Guards, Ahmad Vahidi, who had not appeared in public since his appointment for fear of assassination.

SOBBING CROWDS, FUNERAL TOUR OF IRAQ & IRAN

In Iran’s theocracy, Khamenei was not just head of state and leader of a revolutionary movement, but also the representative on earth for Shi’ite Islam’s 12th imam, who vanished in the ninth century.

His murder in an enemy attack feeds into a powerful Shi’ite ritual of martyrdom and sorrow, in which processions of flagellants beat their chests or backs.

That powerful symbolism has been seen in the black funeral banners that have draped over city streets since his death evoking the seventh-century martyrdom of Shi’ism’s third imam, Hossein.

In central Tehran overnight, a mob stood wailing and shouting, led by a Basij member, as others gave out posters of the late Khamenei.”Only with the revenge of his blood and demanding justice for it and not leaving our leader’s blood unavenged, God willing, can this sorrow of the ⁠people be somewhat alleviated,” said Mobina Razaaghi, an 18-year-old student from Isfahan, attending the burial activities with classmates.

Khamenei was killed along with his daughter, son-in-law and baby granddaughter, who were laid out in coffins adjacent to his, and the wife of his son Mojtaba.

WAR DELAYS BURIAL

Burials are expected to be performed within a day of death in Islam, but the risks of hosting a huge burial during the war meant it was delayed until after last month’s interim truce accord was negotiated.

Hotels are giving 50% discounts, schools, mosques and sports halls are being readied to house mourners, and bus and train networks are being rerouted to support the main events.

After what authorities are touting as a large procession in central Tehran on Monday, the remains will be carried to the seminary city of Qom, the seat of Iran’s Shi’ite hierarchy, for festivities on Tuesday.

On Wednesday ceremonies will take place in the Iraqi cities of Najaf and Kerbala, the shrines of Iraq’s Shi’ite majority, with significant guests from Iran’s regional network of Shi’ite proxies.

He will be laid to rest on Thursday following a second procession, at Mashhad near the shrine of the Imam Reza, a figure of enormous devotion in Iran.