More than 100 days after Iran’s supreme leader ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in Tehran during a targeted Israeli strike, authorities have announced that his funeral will take place during Muharram, the Islamic month of mourning.
The official funeral ceremony is scheduled for July 9 in Khamenei’s home city of Mashhad, a major religious centre in north-eastern Iran. He is to be buried near the shrine of Imam Reza, the eighth Imam revered by Shiite Muslims.
Before the burial, millions of mourners are expected to pay their respects during ceremonies in Tehran on July 4 and 5, and in the holy city of Qom on July 6, the state news agency IRNA reported on Saturday.
Khamenei was killed in late February in an Israeli airstrike on his official residence in Tehran during a wider joint operation with the US military. He was 86. As Iran’s supreme leader from 1989 until his death, he was the country’s highest political and religious authority.
The funeral had originally been planned for an earlier date but was postponed several times, reportedly for security reasons, partly because senior members of Iran’s political leadership are expected to attend.
It remains unclear whether Khamenei’s son and his designated successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, will participate in the ceremonies. He was named supreme leader one week after his father’s death. Since then, he has not appeared in public, fuelling speculation about his health and whereabouts.
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