Iran sets July rites for Ali Khamenei in Tehran, Qom and Mashhad
State media said the late supreme leader’s funeral will start July 4 in Tehran, with burial set for July 9 in Mashhad.
By Sofia Marchetti · World Affairs Correspondent
2 min read
Iranian state media has set a July timetable for public rites for Ali Khamenei, the former supreme leader killed earlier this year. The schedule gives Iran a formal sequence of ceremonies months after his burial was delayed because of the war, according to Al Jazeera and Reuters.
The funeral will begin in Tehran on July 4, state media said. Three days of ceremonies are planned in the capital, followed by another ceremony in Qom on July 7 and burial in Khamenei’s home town of Mashhad on July 9, according to the reports.
State media said the burial had first been planned for March but was postponed because of the war. The opening day of the national funeral will fall on the United States’ Independence Day, Al Jazeera and Reuters reported.
Khamenei was 86 when he was killed in February in a joint US-Israeli air strike on his compound, according to Al Jazeera and Reuters. The reports did not give further details on the strike in the funeral announcement.
Khamenei led Iran from 1989, after the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Al Jazeera and Reuters reported. Khomeini had led the Islamic revolution a decade earlier, ending the Pahlavi monarchy.
Al Jazeera and Reuters described Khomeini as the revolution’s ideological force and said Khamenei later shaped Iran’s military and paramilitary institutions. Khamenei’s long tenure made him one of the central figures in the Islamic Republic’s political system.
His son and successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, has stayed out of public view since the US-Israel war began, according to Al Jazeera and Reuters. A Reuters-distributed file image from June 4 showed people in southern Tehran near a banner displaying Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, Ali Khamenei and Mojtaba Khamenei.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said earlier this month that Mojtaba Khamenei appeared to be taking a more active role as talks between Washington and Tehran continued, according to Al Jazeera and Reuters. Those negotiations followed an April 8 truce, the reports said.
The announced ceremonies put the focus back on Iran’s leadership transition at a time when diplomacy with the United States is continuing. State media’s schedule also indicates that the government plans multiple public events before the burial in Mashhad, one of Iran’s major religious cities.
This story draws on original reporting from Al Jazeera.