Funeral for Iran’s late Supreme Leader Khamenei to begin July 4, burial set for July 9

Funeral for Iran’s late Supreme Leader Khamenei to begin July 4, burial set for July 9

Funeral ceremonies for former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei will be in July, the country’s state-run television said Saturday, as mediators said an agreement to end the war was close.

The funeral, burial and farewell events for Khamenei will take place between July 4 and 9 during Muharram, a traditional period of mourning in the Shia Muslim calendar.

Former Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei

Khamenei was killed in the opening attack of the war that Israel and the United States launched against Iran in late February. He is succeeded by his son, Mojtaba, who is seen as even less compromising.

The funeral ceremonies for Khamenei are expected to begin in Tehran, and the procession will move to Qom, a stronghold of many senior Shiite clerics, and then to Mashhad, his birthplace. He’ll be buried there at the Imam Reza Shrine, considered the holiest place among Shiite devotees.

Funerals for Khamenei’s daughter and son-in-law, also killed in the February strike, will be on the same day.

Khamenei remoulded the Islamic Republic after taking the reins following the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989. Khomeini was the fiery, charismatic ideologue who led the overthrow of the shah and installed rule by Shiite Muslim clerics.

Khamenei ruled far longer than Khomeini. He greatly expanded the Shiite clerical class and built the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard into the most important body underpinning his rule. The Guard became a military and business behemoth, the country’s most elite force and head of its ballistic missile arsenal.