Resistance and revenge - Iran wanted to send a message with its farewell to Khamenei

By Lyse Doucet Chief international correspondent , Reporting from Tehran Published 7 July 2026, 01:46 BST Three days of public mourning in Tehran for its slain supreme leader ended with a major political spectacle the men now in charge wanted the world to see. The hulking funeral cortège, carrying the coffins of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and four family members, inched along a 10km route – slowed, and often stopped, by millions of mourners in one of the largest public gatherings in many years. In a week of funeral events, Monday's march was the most significant in carefully choreographed ceremonies steeped in political messaging of resistance and revenge. But many also stayed away, hurting from two wars in less than a year, inflation spiralling at around 80%, and the pain of January's anti-government protests. Some blame Khamenei, who was also the commander-in-chief, for the security crackdown which killed many thousands. "Of course I'm not going to the funeral," one man told us outside one of the many "mookebs", the rest stations set up in the city and on its outskirts to provide free food and water, most of it from private donations. "Many people don't have work and are so unhappy," he explained. Aerial footage from Monday's procession showed one of Tehran's main arteries chock-full of loyalists consumed by grief and chanting the Islamic Republic's signature slogans of "death to America" and "death to Israel". To play this video you need to enable JavaScript in your browser. This video can not be played Figure caption, 'The spectacle Iran wants the world to see': Lyse Doucet in Tehran "Tears arise from the pain and sorrow that surges within a person, and the world sees this truth," declared Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian, rebutting US President Donald Trump's claim that these were "fake tears". The commemorations now move to some of the most sacred sites for Shia Muslims, including in Qom, south of Tehran, on Tuesday, and then to Najaf and Karbala in neighbouring Iraq. The final burial is on Thursday at the sprawling Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad, the ayatollah's birthplace and Iran's holiest city. "The funeral proceedings are designed to frame him as more than a national leader but a transcendent religious and political figure whose authority extended across the Muslim world, and particularly Shia Islam," observed Mohammad Eslami, research fellow at Tehran University. There's a harsher view of his legacy. "The revolution he preserved was for a world which no longer exists," assesses Karim Sadjadpour, author of Reading Khamenei: the World View of Iran's Most Powerful Leader. Image source, EPA/Shutterstock Image caption, The coffins of Khamenei and four family members were carried in a hulking funeral cortege In Tehran, a flatbed truck, decorated with intricate latticework and Arabic Islamic script, carried five caskets, painted in the green, red and white of Iran's flag, including the smallest for Khamenei's 14-month-old granddaughter Zara.