Khamenei lies in state in Tehran

The body of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei lay in state in a vast hall in Tehran yesterday as clerics, officials, foreign dignitaries and other mourners paid their respects to Iran’s late Supreme Leader, slain by US and Israeli bombs.

Lying in state means a leader’s body is placed publicly for citizens to pay respects before burial.

Iran is staging a week of mass funeral processions for Khamenei, whose 37-year reign was brought to an end in February by the first airstrike of the war, in a show of public devotion to the Islamic Republic’s theocratic state and revolutionary zeal.

Khamenei’s body was expected to be taken to Qom, Najaf and Kerbala, the great Shia centres of Iran and Iraq, before being laid to rest on Thursday in Mashhad, home to the country’s holiest pilgrim shrine.

His coffin was unveiled late on Thursday to a throng of sobbing supporters, swaying and beating their heads in time to a sung lament as flowers were thrown from the bier into the crowd. Yesterday, the coffin — and those of family members killed with him — was laid in state in the great prayer hall built to honour his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The funeral is taking place at a critical moment for Iran, where the clerical rulers backed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are riding high from surviving what they saw as an existential war against their greatest and most powerful foes.

Tehran streets were tightly controlled, with military and police vehicles lining the major roads and police and members of the black-shirted volunteer Basij paramilitary force patrolling on motorbikes. Iran warned the United States and Israel against any attacks during the funeral.

After the coffins arrived yesterday, borne high across the upraised hands of a waiting crowd, they were laid in the prayer hall on a white, stepped, dais before a high, intricately tiled, arched recess, flanked by national and black mourning flags.

A black turban, worn by clerics claiming descent from Islam’s Prophet Mohammed (PBUH), lay on the coffin on a folded chequered scarf, a symbol in Iran of revolutionary ideals and solidarity with Palestinians.

Representatives from Russia and China were expected to attend. Top Iraqi, Armenian and Pakistani politicians arrived in Tehran for the funeral.

Families of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and senior commander Imad Mughniyeh, close Lebanese allies of Iran killed in Israeli strikes, attended the ceremony.

Iran’s own political leaders — the president, parliament speaker, foreign minister and others — filed in to weep and pray yesterday morning. A group of generals stood saluting in front of the coffin.

In Iran’s theocratic system, Khamenei was not only head of state and leader of a revolutionary movement, but the representative on earth for Shia Islam’s ⁠12th imam, who disappeared in the ninth century.

In central Tehran overnight, a crowd stood sobbing and chanting, led by a Basij member, as others handed out posters of the late Khamenei.

“Allah willing, only by avenging his blood, demanding justice for it, and ensuring that our leader’s blood is not left unavenged, can this sorrow of the people be somewhat alleviated,” said Mobina Razaaghi, an 18-year-old student from Isfahan, attending the funeral events with classmates.

Killed alongside Khamenei, and displayed in coffins next to his, were his daughter, son-in-law and baby granddaughter, as well as the wife of his son Mojtaba.