Iran has delayed a farewell event initially planned to honor its late supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on Saturday during joint U.S.-Israeli operations named Operation Epic Fury.
The ceremony, set to span three days, was meant to commence on Wednesday at 10 p.m. local time at the Imam Khomeini Prayer Hall. This venue was expected to draw significant crowds gathering to pay homage, as reported by Tasnim, a semi-official news source in Iran.
Hojjatoleslam Seyed Mohsen Mahmoudi, who leads the Islamic Propaganda Coordination Council in Tehran Province, stated that the delay comes in response to widespread demands for participation and the necessity to ensure the proper infrastructure and facilities for attendees.
“The decision was made to conduct the ceremony at a more suitable time,” he elaborated.
In a previous gathering, Iranian worshippers were seen praying beneath a large portrait of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the Imam Khomeini Mosque’s prayer hall in Tehran on December 9, 2022. (Photo by Morteza Nikoubazl/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
Further details concerning the postponement were not disclosed, and new dates for the ceremony have yet to be announced.
Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz warned Iranian leadership in a post on X that any successor who tries to “destroy Israel, to threaten the United States and the free world and the countries of the region, and to suppress the Iranian people” will be an “unequivocal target for elimination.”
“It does not matter what his name is or the place where he hides,” Katz said.
Portraits of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, right, and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei are carried by scouts in Beirut, Lebanon, on Nov. 24, 2025. (Scott Peterson/Getty Images)
The funeral of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran, drew massive crowds in the country’s capital on June 11, 1989, with an estimated 10.2 million people in attendance, roughly one-sixth of the nation’s population at the time.
According to Guinness World Records, it drew the largest percentage of a population ever recorded at a funeral.
A huge crowd gathers around the container covering Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s tomb at Behesht Zahra cemetery in Tehran on June 7, 1989. (Christophe Simon And Pascal George/AFP via Getty Images)
Khamenei’s death triggers a closely watched succession process overseen by Iran’s Assembly of Experts, the clerical body responsible for appointing the supreme leader.
“The IRGC is a key stakeholder in this process, and will heavily influence its outcome,” Jason Brodsky, policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran, told Fox News Digital.
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