Iran has begun the official funeral ceremonies for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the country’s second Supreme Leader who was assassinated by the U.S. and Israel on February 28. The main public funeral procession would be held in Tehran on June 6 and the final burial ceremony would take place at the Imam Reza Shrine in Mashhad, Khamenei’s home town.
Khamenei, in many ways, was a key architect of the Islamic Republic. When he took over the country as the leader, the Islamic Republic, founded by Ayatollah Khomeini, was just 10 years old. If it was Khomeini who laid the foundations of the republic, it was Khamenei who built the theocratic system. He acted as a stabilising force between the clergy, the political class and the military establishment. He was a hardliner who resisted reforms and a pragmatist who cleared talks with the West at the same time. A conservative cleric, he led Iran through political and economic upheavals, and survived both reformist and hardliner Presidents. But in recent years, on Khamenei’s watch, unrest spread across the country. Iran also saw its influence abroad wane dramatically, particularly after Israel started attacking the so-called ‘axis of resistance’, the Iran-backed militia network in West Asia, after the October 7, 2023 attack by Hamas.
