Millions expected at delayed Khamenei funeral as Iran seeks to project strength

Iran ’s former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei , reviled by some and revered by others, is set to be laid to rest after a sprawling multi-day funeral ceremony planned as both a religious and political spectacle.

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Killed alongside members of his family in the opening salvo of U.S. and Israeli attacks on Tehran on Feb. 28, Khamenei’s legacy looms over nearly every element of the Islamic Republic that he controlled with an iron fist for nearly four decades.

It is only the second time that Iran has laid a supreme leader to rest: The 1989 funeral procession of the Islamic Republic’s founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, was a vast ceremony that drew millions to Tehran, Iran’s capital.

Tehran’s mayor, Alireza Zakani, has said that up to 20 million people could show up for the sprawling funeral in the capital, according to the Young Journalists Club , which is affiliated with Iranian state television.

The funeral will provide an opportunity for those who are now fighting to preserve Khamenei’s legacy to show their strength, said Sina Azodi, director of the Middle East studies program at George Washington University.

“They would like to portray it as a signal of the Islamic Republic’s strength, ability to resist outside pressure, resilience. They will try their best to show the loyalty of the quote-unquote people to the Islamic Republic. From whatever means possible, they will try to bring as many people as they can,” she said.

A viewing of Khamenei’s coffin and prayers are planned for Saturday and Sunday at the Grand Mosalla, a massive mosque and prayer complex in central Tehran, followed by a funeral procession through the streets of the capital on Monday.

Funeral events are also planned in Qom, the Iranian seat of religious scholarship, as well as in Iraq, which is home to two of the most important shrines for Shiites. Taking Khamenei’s funeral events across the border will also allow the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the most powerful military, political and economic force in Iran, to show their regional prominence.

Khamenei will be buried on Thursday in his hometown of Mashhad, which is also the site of the most prominent Shiite religious shrine in Iran.

Muslim custom dictates that funerals should be held soon after death — the vast funeral for Khomeini was held only days after he died. The delayed funeral for Khamenei, four months on from his death, comes in far from ordinary circumstances amid a shaky peace deal with the United States.

The date of the funeral was only confirmed last month , days before the U.S. and Iran signed a memorandum of understanding intended to mark the official end of hostilities.

Several other top political and military officials were killed in the U.S. and Israeli attacks that battered Iran for more than a month in the initial phase of the war, leaving an uncertain political state.

Khamenei’s 56-year-old son Mojtaba, who was wounded in the same attack that killed his father, was appointed the new supreme leader in March but has not been seen in public or even issued an audio statement since, raising questions about his health. The Iranian government has not confirmed whether he will attend any of his father’s funeral events.

The elder Khamenei’s image, meanwhile, still looms over Tehran, with many of the city’s nationalistic murals depicting him and Khomeini, alongside imagery denouncing U.S.-Israeli aggression. Iranian state media and the regime routinely refer to the late 86-year-old as a martyr.

Khamenei’s decades in power saw him empower the IRGC to become the top military, political and economic force in the country. Since the war began, the successive attempts by the Israeli and U.S. military to decapitate the regime have led to the rise of more hardline elements of the Revolutionary Guard, analysts say.

“The IRGC dominates strategic decision-making and the allocation of national resources,” said Ali Alfoneh, a senior fellow at the Arab Gulf States Institute, a Washington think tank.

Among those who have quickly risen through the ranks is Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the current speaker of parliament and lead negotiator in talks with the U.S. Ghalibaf has regularly taunted President Donald Trump in snarky posts on X .

“We must rise up and convey the nation’s call for (avenging the blood of the martyred Leader) to the world so that the world knows that the noble nation of Iran will not remain silent in the face of oppression and arrogance,” Ghalibaf said Thursday in a statement, according to the semiofficial Tasnim news agency.

In many ways, Khamenei’s funeral will be an opportunity for the hardline elements of the IRGC to show that they have survived the worst that Trump can throw at them and send a message to domestic critics to stay off the streets.

The expected large crowds will contrast with the massive nationwide protests that rocked Iran in January and became the biggest internal challenge in the regime’s 47-year history. Security forces suppressed the protests in a bloody crackdown that left thousands dead .

The economic conditions that precipitated those protests have since been worsened by months of war , an uneasy reality as Iran and the U.S. continue negotiations toward a longer-term peace.

Security will be a top concern. In 1989, Khomeini’s chaotic procession saw his body jostled out of the coffin. At least eight people died, and many people were injured in a stampede among the crowd.

Militant groups have also targeted funeral ceremonies for prominent Iranian figures in the past. An Islamic State attack on a large gathering for the anniversary of the death of Gen. Qassem Soleimani in 2024 killed at least 84 people in the city of Kerman in central Iran.

Still, the biggest challenge for Iran’s leaders may be what comes after the funeral, analysts say.

“Khamenei fortified the Islamic Republic against its external enemies, but in the process weakened the republican foundations on which its long-term legitimacy depended,” said Ali Vaez, Iran project director for the International Crisis Group think tank, adding: “After war, leadership transition and the lingering trauma of a brutally suppressed uprising, the Islamic Republic enters a period of profound uncertainty.”