The funeral for Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei begins today in Tehran, four months after he was killed in a joint US-Israeli airstrike on February 28. The regime hopes to see millions flood the streets of the capital in scenes reminiscent of the burial of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, when an estimated 10 million mourners turned out.
Khamenei’s body will lie in state at the Tehran Mosalla prayer hall on July 4 and 5, followed by funeral processions through the capital on July 6 and in the holy city of Qom on July 7. Part of the proceedings will move to Iraq on July 8, including processions in Najaf and Karbala, before the body is returned to Iran for burial on July 9 at the shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad, Khamenei’s hometown and Iran’s second-largest city.
The scale of the event is enormous. Tehran’s municipality is preparing to absorb close to 20 million people and nearly two million vehicles. Official estimates put expected attendance at up to 35 million nationwide over the six-day period. If those numbers hold, the funeral will be one of the largest public gatherings in modern history.
Delegations and groups of believers from Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, India and other regional countries have already announced plans to attend. Some Iraqi officials even called for Khamenei’s body to be taken to Najaf and Karbala before burial in Iran.
The roughly four-month gap between Khamenei’s death and the funeral has drawn criticism from the regime’s opponents. Under Islamic tradition, the dead are ideally buried within 24 hours. The prolonged delay was driven by the war, which is still ongoing, and severe security concerns. Officials have acknowledged fears of aerial strikes on the funeral itself or of a mass casualty crowd crush similar to the one that killed at least 56 people at Qasem Soleimani’s funeral in 2020. The regime has deployed thousands of security personnel across the three host cities and established no-fly zones over the procession routes. Foreign dignitaries have been invited from allied states, though few Western governments are expected to send representatives.
The timing is politically significant. July 4 marks exactly one year since IAEA inspectors left Iran, a date that carries its own symbolic weight for the regime. The funeral overlaps with the anniversary of the nuclear inspections suspension, creating a week in which the Islamic Republic will be simultaneously mourning its former leader and confronting the international isolation that has deepened under the war.
Khamenei, who ruled Iran for 36 years, was killed alongside several senior military commanders and relatives in the initial hours of the US-Israeli campaign. His son, Mojtaba Khamenei, was selected as the new supreme leader in early March.
The funeral represents both a moment of national grieving and a test of the regime’s organizational capacity. The Iranian theocracy is still fighting a war, managing a collapsing economy, and facing internal dissent. Organizing a six-day, multi-city funeral for millions of mourners while under aerial threat is a logistical and security challenge that few governments could manage.
For the regime, the size of the crowds that turn out will be read as a measure of political legitimacy. For the West, the funeral is a reminder that while the regime’s leadership changed in February, the system itself did not. The Islamic Republic continues to function. The question is how much longer it can keep doing so while fighting a war and burying its former leader.