New supreme leader stays out of sight as Iran buries Khamenei amid mass mourning

Reports from international media outlets described mourners on Sunday calling for Trump's death.

Iran’s new supreme leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, stayed away from his father’s funeral on Sunday, even as senior regime officials joined thousands of mourners paying tribute to the late ayatollah.

Ali Khamenei’s three other sons, Masoud, Mostafa and Meysam, all attended Sunday’s service alongside President Masoud Pezeshkian and Revolutionary Guards commander Ahmad Vahidi. Speculation about Mojtaba’s health has persisted for months, fueled by rumors that he suffered wounds in the same American and Israeli air strikes that killed his father. He has not made a single public appearance since officials named him supreme leader in early March.

The elder Khamenei led the Islamic republic from 1989 until his death in February. Formal funeral proceedings began Friday, with ceremonies scheduled across Iran and Iraq throughout the coming week. Iranian officials estimate that between 12 and 20 million people will take part in what they have described as the funeral of the century.

Khamenei’s body currently lies in state at Tehran’s Grand Mosalla religious complex, where prominent Shia scholar Jafar Sobhani, a 97 year old cleric who teaches in the holy city of Qom, led Sunday’s funeral prayers. Authorities declared Sunday a public holiday across the country, and officials planned to move Khamenei’s body out of the Grand Mosalla later in the day ahead of a procession through Tehran on Monday.

Organizers have choreographed the funeral proceedings carefully, and Mojtaba Khamenei’s continued absence comes amid concerns that Israel may also be targeting him for assassination. A fragile ceasefire between Iran and its adversaries currently holds while negotiators work toward a permanent peace agreement, though both sides have warned they remain ready to resume military action if talks collapse.

President Donald Trump told reporters Saturday that peace negotiations had paused for a week to accommodate funeral events, according to a news website. Trump reportedly said Washington could eliminate many of Iran’s senior officials gathered for the ceremonies with a single strike, but added that doing so would leave no one left to negotiate with. Trump also said he found it surprising to see Iranians crying at the funeral, suggesting he believed most Iranians despised Khamenei and questioning whether the tears were genuine.

Zahra Safaei, a 50 year old mourner, rejected that characterization, saying her nation did not stage a revolution 47 years ago or sacrifice countless lives to shed false tears.

Reports from international media outlets described mourners on Sunday calling for Trump’s death. Poet Mohammad Rasouli told the crowd before prayers that avenging Khamenei through Trump’s death represented a shared responsibility, drawing chants of death to America and death to Israel from those gathered. Demonstrators throughout the city carried banners bearing slogans calling for the deaths of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, along with vows of revenge.

Organizers expect the Tehran events alone to draw more than 10 million mourners from across the country, prompting authorities to impose strict security measures and warn state media about the risk of crowd crush incidents. Iran’s official news agency reported Sunday that medical centers near the Grand Mosalla had treated more than 4,000 people, though no deaths had occurred. Photographs from the scene showed mourners receiving cooling mist sprays in the heat, while medics carried at least one elderly woman away on a stretcher.

Khamenei’s coffin rests alongside those of four relatives killed in the strikes on Tehran, including his one year old granddaughter, Zahra Mohammadi Golpayegani. Throughout his decades in power, Khamenei pursued a confrontational stance toward Western nations and provided sustained support to armed groups opposing the United States and Israel across the region, including Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon and the Houthi movement in Yemen.

Following Monday’s procession through Tehran, organizers will transport Khamenei’s coffin to Qom on Tuesday, then to a significant Shia religious site in neighboring Iraq on Wednesday, before his eventual burial Thursday in his hometown of Mashhad in northeastern Iran.