Prayers offered for Iran’s Khamenei on day two of funeral ceremonies

• Prayers for Iran’s late supreme leader Ali Khamenei were held on July 5 in Tehran, with huge crowds attending despite high temperatures and security measures.
• Khamenei’s son Mojtaba, now supreme leader, was absent from the prayers, while other sons and senior officials attended the ceremonies.
• The funeral is seen as a test of political support amid regional tensions, with allies like Hamas and Hezbollah present and plans for processions until burial on July 9.

TEHRAN – Iranian leaders joined prayers on July 5 over the casket of Iran’s late supreme leader Ali Khamenei during the second day of funeral ceremonies, but his son and successor Mojtaba Khamenei was conspicuously absent.

The elder Khamenei ruled the Islamic Republic from 1989 until he was killed at age 86 in an air strike on the first day of the US-Israeli war with Iran on Feb 28.

Officials including President Masoud Pezeshkian and Revolutionary Guards chief Ahmad Vahidi joined July 5’s ceremonies, along with huge crowds paying their final respects in Tehran.

But Mojtaba has not appeared in public since his appointment in early March. He is said to have been wounded in the attack that killed his father.

The late supreme leader’s other three sons, Masoud, Mostafa and Meysam, all attended the service, which was held at Tehran’s Grand Mosalla religious complex and led by prominent Shia cleric Jafar Sobhani, a 97-year-old scholar who teaches at seminaries in the holy city of Qom.

July 5 was declared a public holiday across Iran. Later in the day, Khamenei’s body will be moved from the Grand Mosalla complex where it is lying in state in preparation for processions through the capital on July 6.

The vast religious complex and surrounding streets were packed with mourners on the morning of July 5, AFP journalists saw.

With temperatures set to exceed 35 deg C, many were handed refreshments as they made their way to the Grand Mosalla, some carrying Iranian flags or portraits of the late Khamenei.

The authorities have said they expect more than 10 million people to take part in ceremonies in Tehran. Strict security measures have been imposed and official media warned of a risk of crowd crushes.

“More than 4,000 people visited medical centres located in and near Tehran’s Mosalla,” Iran’s official IRNA news agency reported on July 5, but no deaths had been recorded.

Footage from state television showed Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, Iran’s Parliament Speaker and its chief negotiator in talks with the US, attending the prayers.

Ghalibaf, one of the most prominent faces of the post-Ali Khamenei era, hailed on X how the “proud and invincible nation of Islamic Iran unanimously” paid tribute to its “martyr”.

Esmail Qaani, the shadowy head of the Guards’ Quds Force – responsible for its foreign operations – also made a rare appearance, telling Iranian TV that Khamenei’s “blessed end” was fitting after a lifetime of “striving”.

Khamenei’s coffin, draped in the Iranian flag and topped with his black turban, was placed alongside the coffins of four relatives also killed in the February strikes, including an infant granddaughter.

‘Killers must face punishment’

After five weeks of intense hostilities, the Middle East war is on hold after a ceasefire and an initial accord with the US.

But both Washington and Tehran have warned they are ready to resume military action.

“The killers (of Khamenei) must face punishment,” a 38-year-old man surnamed Miremadi told AFP as he attended the prayers.

“If our leaders are about to proceed with negotiations in this manner, our people will not agree with it,” he said, adding that people were seeking revenge, not peace and negotiations.

Khamenei’s funeral is being viewed outside Iran as a test of support for the government following mass protests in January before the war that rights groups say were quelled by a crackdown that left thousands dead.

“We’re here to show the world that we back our revolution and our leader, and we demand revenge for the blood of our loved ones,” said one woman surnamed Bakand, a 39-year-old homemaker attending July 5’s prayers.

Khamenei had long pursued a course of confrontation with the West, and Tehran for years has provided support to anti-US and anti-Israel armed groups around the region, including Palestinian Hamas and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Delegations from both groups met Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi on July 4, state media reported, while representatives of Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Hamas ally Palestinian Islamic Jihad were also in attendance at the funeral.

After the processions through Tehran on July 6, Khamenei’s coffin will be moved on July 7 to Qom, then on July 8 to neighbouring Iraq, before the burial on July 9 in his north-eastern hometown of Mashhad. AFP