Mass grief at funeral projects hardline grip on post-war Iran

TEHRAN: Tens of thousands of Iranians thronged a vast outdoor prayer complex in Tehran on Saturday to view the coffins of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader killed at the start of the US-Israeli war on Iran, and his family.Dressed in black and draped in the red, white and green flags of the Islamic Republic of Iran, mourners held up portraits of Khamenei and his son and successor, Mojtaba.In a show of public devotion to the Islamic Republic’s theocratic state and revolutionary zeal, Iran is staging a week of mass funeral processions for the supreme leader killed in February by the opening airstrikes of the war.After a day lying in state indoors for senior Iranian leaders and foreign officials to visit, Khamenei’s coffin was put on display under glass outdoors, along with those of his daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law and 14-month-old granddaughter. There has still been no public sighting or image released of Mojtaba, the new leader, said to have been injured in the attack that killed his father.Mourners filed into the vast courtyard of the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla, beating their chests, wailing and waving the banners of the Islamic Republic. Women dressed in black chadors wore white visors or held umbrellas to shield from the hot mid-morning sun.“Let us wail!” a compere encouraged the crowds through a loudspeaker. Chants of “Death to America” echoed through the huge prayer hall.“Everyone here has come to avenge the blood of their supreme leader,” Arash Rahimi, 40, told Reuters in the crowd. “As our leader has said, we have a blood feud with the United States. Our relations with the US will never be good.”The funeral is taking place at a critical moment for Iran, with its clerical rulers, backed by the military, buoyed from having survived the onslaught with their ruling system intact.In Iran’s theocratic system, Khamenei was not only head of state and leader of a revolutionary movement, but the earthly representative for Shi’ite Islam’s last imam, a holy figure who disappeared in the ninth century.His death in an enemy attack plays into a long tradition of martyrdom and ritual mourning, dating to the seventh century death in battle of the Prophet Mohammad’s grandson Hussein.(This is a Reuters story)