Iran's state funeral for Ali Khamenei reached its largest stage on Monday, a 10-kilometre procession through central Tehran from Imam Hossein Square to Azadi Square, and the man who succeeded him was once again not there. Mojtaba Khamenei, named supreme leader in March, has not been seen in public since the strike that killed his father more than four months ago.
Ali Khamenei, who was 86 and had led Iran since 1989, was killed on 28 February in the joint US-Israeli strikes that opened this year's war, along with four members of his family. The long-delayed funeral began in Tehran at the end of last week and moves to the holy city of Qom on Tuesday, then to Najaf and Karbala in Iraq on Wednesday, before burial at the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad on Thursday.
At Sunday's prayers at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla, three of Khamenei's sons, Mostafa, Meysam and Masoud, prayed beside the five coffins, with President Masoud Pezeshkian and parliament speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf behind them. The prayers were led by 97-year-old Ayatollah Jafar Sobhani. The Associated Press reported crowds of hundreds of thousands in Tehran on Sunday; Iranian authorities have released no official count.
Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, was selected by the Assembly of Experts on 8 March. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth claimed in March that he had been "wounded and likely disfigured" in the same strike that killed his father; Tehran has not commented on his condition, and the funeral has now passed its halfway point without him.
For the mourners, the absence has not gone unnoticed. "Our leader should say what we need to do, and we must listen to him," Tehran mourner Ziba Naderi told the Associated Press on Sunday. Pakistan's Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, Russia's Dmitry Medvedev and the Taliban's foreign minister were among the dignitaries, with Al Jazeera reporting representatives from more than 100 countries expected. Iran's civil aviation authority closed Tehran's airspace for Monday's procession.
The funeral is taking place inside a fragile pause in the war. Under the Islamabad Memorandum signed electronically by Donald Trump and President Pezeshkian on 17 June, strikes have stopped for a 60-day extended ceasefire, the Strait of Hormuz has reopened toll-free and the US naval blockade has been lifted. Israel was not a party to the document and has objected to it.
For Australians, the practical position is unchanged: Iran remains under a do-not-travel advisory, the Australian embassy in Tehran has suspended operations, and Smartraveller warns consular help is extremely limited.
The procession reaches Qom on Tuesday and the burial is set for Thursday in Mashhad. Whether Iran's new supreme leader shows his face before his father is in the ground is the question this funeral has so far declined to answer.
