TEHRAN: Tens of thousands of Iranians gathered at an outdoor prayer complex in Tehran on Saturday to view the coffins of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader who was killed at the start of the US-Israel war on Iran, and his family.The mourners wore black clothes, wrapped the red, white and green flags of the Islamic Republic of Iran, and raised pictures of Khamenei, his son and successor Mojtaba.In a display of public devotion to the Islamic Republic’s theocratic state and revolutionary fervor, Iran is organizing a week of mass funeral processions for the supreme leader, who was killed last February in the first air strikes of the war.After spending a day indoors visiting top Iranian leaders and foreign officials, Khamenei’s coffin was displayed under glass outdoors, alongside those of his daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law and 14-month-old granddaughter.
No public sighting or photo of Mujtaba, the new leader, who was said to have been injured in the attack that killed his father, has yet to be seen.Mourners streamed into the wide square of Imam Khomeini’s grand prayer hall, beating their chests, wailing and waving the flags of the Islamic Republic. Women in black chadors wore white masks or carried umbrellas for protection from the hot mid-morning sun.“Let’s cry!” The compere encouraged the crowd through a loudspeaker.
Chants of “Death to America” echoed in the huge prayer hall.“Everyone here came to avenge the blood of their supreme leader,” Arash Rahimi, 40, told Reuters in the crowd. He added, “As our leader said, we have a blood feud with the United States. Our relations with the United States will never be good.”The funeral is being held at a critical moment for Iran, where its clerical rulers, supported by the military, survived the attack with their system of government intact.In the Iranian theocracy, Khamenei was not only the head of state and the leader of a revolutionary movement, but he was the earthly representative of the last imam of Shiism, a sacred figure who disappeared in the ninth century.His death in an enemy attack is consistent with a long tradition of martyrdom and mourning rituals dating back to the death of Hussein, the grandson of the Prophet Muhammad, in the seventh century AD. (This is a Reuters report)
