The body of Iran's slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was lying in state in a vast hall in Tehran on Friday as clerics, officials, foreign dignitaries and other mourners paid their respects after his 37-year rule.
Iran is staging a week of mass funeral processions for Khamenei — killed in February by US and Israeli airstrikes at the start of a four-month war — in a show of public devotion to the country's theocratic state and revolutionary fire.
Khamenei's body was expected to be taken to Qom, Najaf and Karbala, the great Shiite centers of Iran and Iraq, before being laid to rest on Thursday in Mashhad, home to the country's holiest shrine.
His coffin was unveiled late on Thursday to a throng of sobbing supporters, swaying and beating their heads in time to a sung lament as flowers were thrown from the bier into the crowd. On Friday the coffin — and those of family members killed with him — was laid in state in the great prayer hall built to honor his predecessor, Khomeini.
The funeral comes at a critical moment for Iran, where the clerical rulers backed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps are riding high from surviving what they saw as an existential war against their greatest and most powerful foes.
But nearly five decades after the 1979 revolution, and for all the official proclamations of national unity in the run-up to Khamenei's funeral, the country has rarely been so internally fractured.
Support for the clerical leadership is paper thin, analysts say, and the new Supreme Leader, Khamenei's son Mojtaba Khamenei, has not been seen in public since being wounded in the strike that killed his father.
Years of crippling sanctions have paralyzed the economy as accelerating bouts of mass nationwide protests have been put down by security forces with increasing force, culminating in the killing of thousands of demonstrators in January.
Those deep problems have been brushed aside this week, with the authorities mounting a display of state power and mass support, mobilizing what they hope will be millions of mourners to take part in the funeral.
Tehran streets were tightly controlled, with military and police vehicles lining the major roads and police and members of the black-shirted volunteer Basij paramilitary force patrolling on motorbikes. Iran warned the United States and Israel against any attacks during the funeral.
After the coffins arrived on Friday, borne high across the upraised hands of a waiting crowd, they were laid in the prayer hall on a white, stepped, dais before a high, intricately tiled, arched recess, flanked by national and black mourning flags.
Delegations, including from Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, home to the strongest proxies in Iran's network of regional power, followed each other into the hall to stand before the coffins.
Representatives from Russia and China were expected to attend. Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Pakistani Interior Minister Syed Mohsin Naqvi arrived in Tehran for the funeral.
Families of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and senior commander Imad Mughniyeh, close Lebanese allies of Iran killed in Israeli strikes, attended the ceremony.
In central Tehran overnight, a crowd stood sobbing and chanting, led by a Basij member, as others handed out posters of the late Khamenei.
"God willing, only by avenging his blood, demanding justice for it, and ensuring that our leader's blood is not left unavenged, can this sorrow of the people be somewhat alleviated," said Mobina Razaaghi, an 18-year-old student from Isfahan, attending the funeral events with classmates.
Killed alongside Khamenei, and displayed in coffins next to his, were his daughter, son-in-law and baby granddaughter, as well as the wife of his son Mojtaba.
Burials are meant to be conducted within a day of death in Islam, but because of the risks of holding a big funeral during the war it was postponed until after last month's interim truce deal was agreed.
Hotels are offering 50% discounts, schools, mosques and sports halls have been prepared to house mourners, and bus and rail networks are being diverted to serve the main events.
After what authorities are billing as a massive procession in central Tehran on Monday, the remains will be taken to the seminary city of Qom for ceremonies on Tuesday.
Ceremonies will then be held in Iraq's shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala on Wednesday with prominent attendees from Iran's regional network of proxies.
He will be buried on Thursday, after another procession, in Mashhad.
