Giant Funeral Ceremony for Khamenei in Tehran: Anti-US and Israel Slogans from the Crowd

A historic funeral ceremony was held in the capital Tehran for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who served as the religious leader of Iran for 36 years. Millions of Iranians took to the streets to bid a final farewell to their leader, walking for hours behind the coffin despite high temperatures. Accompanied by a massive crowd, the funeral vehicle covered a route of approximately 10 kilometers, starting from the Grand Mosque, passing through Enqelab Square and Azadi Square, and ending at Tehran Mehrabad International Airport. Drone footage broadcast by official Iranian state television revealed the presence of a crowd that virtually filled the city's main boulevards and was even larger than the one at the 2020 Qasem Soleimani funeral. The intensity and devotion demonstrated by the participants revealed that this ceremony, which caused a great repercussion on the regional and global agenda, was an extremely critical turning point in Iranian history.

One of the most striking aspects of the ceremony was the strong anti-American and anti-Israeli rhetoric rising from the crowd. Many who attended the funeral not only mourned Khamenei but also demanded revenge for his death. Among the participants, alongside Iranian and Hezbollah flags, red 'revenge flags,' which symbolize avenging martyrs in Iranian culture, were frequently seen. The public carrying banners containing harsh messages directed at the US and Israel clearly revealed that regional tensions and political polarization were also reflected in the funeral ceremony. This event painted an important picture showing how deeply the Iranian people and administration have internalized their current geopolitical positions and hostilities.

The crowd's anger focused on US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, leading to highly striking scenes. Protesters carried banners demanding the deaths of Trump and Netanyahu, while they threw stones at a billboard hanging on a bridge they passed under, which targeted Trump. Some women opened red banners with the English text 'KILL TRUMP' over their black chadors, while another group of protesters burned US and British flags. Furthermore, reactions were dramatically displayed by burning an effigy of US President Trump in an area in the east of Tehran. These extreme reactions by the attendees conveyed the magnitude of the anti-American and anti-Israeli sentiment in the country to the international public with striking images.

On the vehicles accompanying the ceremony, coffins were carried, including that of Khamenei's 14-month-old grandson, which created a profound emotional fluctuation in the crowd. Iranians dressed in black experienced emotional moments in tears, throwing flower petals onto the coffins, especially that of the deceased leader's grandson. In addition, another vehicle decorated with pictures of high-ranking Iranian officials killed in recent years, particularly Qasem Soleimani, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards Quds Force who was killed in a US airstrike in Iraq in 2020, was also part of the convoy. These details revealed that the ceremony represented not only the death of a single leader but the entirety of the political and military losses Iran has suffered in recent years. The fact that past losses were also scrutinized at the ceremony revealed how the Iranian regime uses the concept of martyrdom as a tool for social motivation.

Following this massive funeral ceremony in Tehran, the ceremony was moved to Qom, one of Iran's holy cities, located approximately 150 kilometers south of Tehran. Starting from the morning hours on Tuesday, July 7, funeral and memorial prayers began with intense participation at the Jamkaran Mosque in the holy city. Following the massive crowd of the Tehran ceremony and the intense interest it generated in the international public, the religious rituals in Qom are also expected to continue with similar intensity. These events, compared to the massive funeral ceremony of former religious leader Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, have once again proven the continuity and power of political and religious rituals in the country. Although officials have not announced a clear figure regarding the number of instant participants, the images from the field confirm that these celebrations are a mass movement rarely seen in Iran's modern history.