Iran plans three-day funeral for supreme leader Ali Khamenei, more than 3 months after his death

People ride motorcycles near a billboard with the image of the late Supreme Leader of Iran, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in Tehran, Iran, May 6, 2026
Majid Asgaripour/WANA/Reuters
Iran announced on Tuesday (2) that it will hold a three-day state funeral for the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the initial US and Israeli airstrikes on 28 February, which triggered the war in the Middle East.
Ali Khamenei, who led the Islamic Republic for almost 37 years, was murdered in his home in central Tehran. A state funeral initially planned for March 4 was postponed due to the war.
He was replaced by his son, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not yet made public appearances, and whose health status is a mystery.
"A three-day public funeral has been planned," said Tehran's deputy mayor, Mohammad Amin Tavakolizadeh, this Tuesday, in an interview with state television.
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Tavakolizadeh did not specify the date of the funeral, but indicated that it could be at the beginning of Muharram, the first month of the Islamic calendar, which falls in mid-June.
He added that funeral ceremonies will be held in Tehran, as well as in the holy cities of Qom and Mashhad, where Khamenei will be laid to rest.
"In Tehran, the ceremony will last at least 24 hours," said Tavakolizadeh, adding that up to 20 million people are expected to attend.
Supreme leader
Ali Khamenei was on the front line of the Islamic Revolution in 1979, alongside Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, leader of the movement who became supreme leader until his death in 1989.
Born in 1939 in the city of Mashhad, in eastern Iran, Khamenei had his years of religious and political formation in the 1960s, involved in movements that questioned the regime of then Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlevi.
He became close to Khomeini's movement during his studies in Qom, and was soon helping to organize it and carrying out missions in Iranian territory.
In June 1981, Khamenei suffered a bomb attack that left his right arm permanently paralyzed. Four months later, he was elected president of Iran, with 95% of the votes.
He remained president until Khomeini's death, when the Assembly of Experts chose him as the new supreme leader.
Experts attributed to Khamenei a strategy of building and strengthening parallel structures within the State that mirrored some of its institutions, such as the Army and intelligence agencies, in order to better control them. This is the case of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard (IRGC), for example, a force parallel to the traditional military.
Over the years, it became capable of increasingly influencing the formulation and execution of policies in the country, and fostered the cult of its personality.
In 2018, an investigative report by the news agency Reuters stated that Khamenei controlled a powerful financial empire worth at the time 95 billion dollars, based on the confiscation of properties that they belonged to normal Iranians, including minorities. The investigation found no evidence that he used his fortune for personal luxuries, but rather to finance his political actions - the investigation was at the time classified as incorrect by his office.
In more than three decades in power, Khamenei faced several waves of protests, all violently repressed, while maintaining a hard-line policy regarding customs. His government was accused of killing exiled opponents, and repressed journalists and intellectuals not aligned with the regime.

Source: G1

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