TEHRAN, Iran — Senior Iranian officials and the brothers of the country’s new supreme leader appeared in public Sunday for funeral prayers honoring Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a display that suggested confidence in their security as Tehran resists U.S. demands in talks aimed at bringing the war to a lasting close.
Hundreds of thousands of mourners filled the streets, chanting “Death to America” and “Death to Israel” while demanding retaliation for the Feb. 28 attack that killed the 86-year-old supreme leader and several other senior figures, setting off the conflict. Some hard-line voices went further, calling for the assassination of U.S. President Donald Trump.
Iran’s new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, has not yet been seen at the funeral events, which are taking place over multiple days. He is believed to be in hiding after reportedly suffering injuries in the airstrike that killed his father.
During the most intense phase of the war, before an April ceasefire, Israel targeted senior Iranian leaders and, in at least one instance, is believed to have used a public appearance to pinpoint a target’s location. Israel has also threatened to kill the younger Khamenei.
The United States, meanwhile, is continuing negotiations with Iran focused on fully reopening the Strait of Hormuz and scaling back Tehran’s contested nuclear program.
Ziba Naderi, a 42-year-old nurse who attended Sunday’s funeral, said Iranians should follow Mojtaba Khamenei’s direction. “I heard the call for revenge, but our leader should say what we need to do,” she said. “And we must listen to him.”
Top officials appear as the crowd size swells
Ayatollah Jafar Sobhani, a 97-year-old Shiite cleric, led the prayers at Tehran’s Grand Mosalla for the late Khamenei and family members who were killed in the strike.
Also present were Khamenei’s other sons — Masoud, Meysam and Mostafa — who had not been seen publicly since the war began. Revolutionary Guard chief Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, photographed Thursday for the first time since the conflict, was spotted in the crowd by Associated Press journalists, wearing a black baseball cap and surrounded by plainclothes security personnel.
Iran’s President Masoud Pezeshkian, Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf – who has led the negotiations with the U.S. – and Esmail Qaani, who leads the elite Quds Force of the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, also attended.
The crowd had grown from the day before. Mourners dressed in black carried banners and flags honoring Khamenei.
Some mention Trump by name as mourners call for revenge
Posters and graffiti at the Grand Mosalla called for the killing of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Why is the biggest bastard in the world still alive?” Mohammad Rasouli, a poet who emceed the event before the prayers, said to the crowd over loudspeakers, referring to Trump. “The world is no longer a good place” for Trump, he added as the crowd cheered.
“I came here to shout and seek revenge,” said Gholamreza Sabooni, a 29-year-old man who works in a grocery. “They killed our imam, we should kill their leader, Trump.”
The U.S. president was giving a speech at the same time across the world in Washington, D.C., for the 250th anniversary of America’s founding.
“We’ve had tremendous success,” Trump said about the U.S. military. “You look at Venezuela, you look at Iran. We wiped it out, wiped out their military.”
U.S. federal authorities have been tracking Iranian threats against Trump and other administration officials for years. That stems from Trump ordering the 2020 killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who had led the Quds Force. Iran repeatedly has denied plotting to kill Trump, though hard-line propaganda footage long has suggested Trump was in Tehran’s crosshairs.
Trump meanwhile promised to destroy Iran’s very civilization during the war, among other threats.
Funeral postpones talks with US
Khamenei’s body will be transported to cities in Iran and neighboring Iraq, with authorities planning to drive his casket and others through the streets of Tehran on Monday. Authorities have shut down streets, airspace and daily life for the mourning, which will end Thursday as he is buried at the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad, Khamenei’s place of birth.
Authorities offered no attendance count for the event Saturday and Sunday. Other cities across Iran also held mourning ceremonies.
Talks over reaching a permanent end to the war appear to be on hold until the end of the funeral.
The funeral was in part a show of unity and defiance as Iran demands a measure of control over the Strait of Hormuz, a vital waterway for global energy that it shut down during the war. The U.S. has rejected those demands, and the sides are divided on other key issues, including the conflict between Israel and the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon and Iran’s nuclear program.
The U.S. assisted 70 transits of the Strait of Hormuz over the past 72 hours, including 18 on Saturday, a multinational maritime body overseen by the U.S. Navy said Sunday. It called traffic steady along routes near Oman and Iran but still below prewar levels. The threat level remained “substantial” and mine clearance and surveying work continued.
“Our foreign policy should not be shaped in a way that allows our martyred leader’s blood to be dishonored and other countries can afford to do such things, without any serious response from our government and diplomatic system,” mourner Mohammad Reza Sharifi said.
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Gambrell reported from Dubai, United Arab Emirates. Associated Press writer Cara Anna in Lowville, New York, contributed.
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