Crowd chants ‘Death to America’ as Khamenei’s casket winds through Tehran

TEHRAN ― A huge funeral procession for Iran’s slain supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, was held in Tehran on Monday morning, with a teeming crowd clogging the streets to bid farewell to the ayatollah who ruled the country for 37 years before his death in an airstrike at age 86.

Mourners began making their way into the heart of the Iranian capital before dawn Monday, riding the metro, driving and walking on foot. As crowds formed, people began to chant “Death to America!” and “Death to Israel!” And some of the mourners demanded retribution.

Ezat Vezvaei, 67, who said her son, a member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, was killed in the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, rapped her fingers on a Trump poster that read, “Wanted dead or alive.”

“Just be sure we will take our revenge from this, Trump!” she said.

At the various funeral events, which began Saturday, several senior Iranian officials have made their first public appearances since the start of the war. But there has been one conspicuous absence: Iran’s new supreme leader, Khamenei’s son Mojtaba.

Mojtaba Khamenei was reportedly injured in the strike that killed his father and has not been seen in public since before the start of the war. Traditionally, he would have been the one to pray over his father’s casket on Sunday.

Three of the elder Khamenei’s other sons were in attendance at service at the Grand Mosalla religious complex, but Ayatollah Jafar Sobhani, a prominent theologian and member of the Council of Experts that chose Mojtaba as successor, led the prayer of the dead.

During Monday’s outdoor procession, some mourners described Mojtaba Khamenei’s absence as expected, given concerns about his personal safety, but nonetheless a disappointment.

Khamenei’s casket was slowly transported across the capital city atop a truck, in a glass enclosure decorated to resemble a shrine. By midday, it had arrived at the procession’s destination: Azadi Square.

Thumping Shiite religious music blared from an elaborate soundstage at the square’s base and people in the crowd began beating their chests. As Khamenei’s casket entered the roundabout, the crowd surged toward it and the music slowed. Many in the crowd began to cry.

People climbed atop the water trucks and ambulances parked along the route for a better view. Khamenei’s casket sat alongside those of his family members who were killed along with him, on Feb. 28, the first day of U.S.-Israeli attacks.

Iran’s ruling system encouraged people to take to the streets for the funeral as a show of strength at an uncertain time for the country. Talks with the United States were paused while Iran went into national mourning, but the ceasefire between the sides remains shaky, and they have continued to trade attacks.

Khamenei led Iran for 37 years, through wars, uprisings and escalating confrontations with the United States. Under his leadership, Iran expanded its nuclear program, repressed freedoms domestically and established patronage networks for violent proxy militant groups, including Hezbollah and Hamas, by which it confronted the U.S. and Israel.

The massive crowds gathered in central Tehran complicated the procession, which wound its way by road from east to west across the city of some 9 million.

Many of the mourners were trying to touch Khamenei’s casket, so as the truck carrying the leader’s body moved along the route, crowds surged toward it. Multiple times, the vehicle became stuck.

In at least one instance, the procession route was altered and rumors swirled that if the roads became impassable, the casket would be lifted the remainder of the distance by helicopter.

By late morning, a human chain had formed around the coffin to allow the vehicle to move forward, according to the state-run Fars news outlet.

“This will be the last time he will be in Tehran forever,” said Amir Ebadi, 43, an aviation engineer who was waiting in the shade of a tree on the edge of Azadi Square with his two young children.

After tens of thousands of people gathered in Tehran’s Grand Mosalla religious complex, where Khamenei’s body lay in state Saturday and Sunday, the procession through the city center drew even greater crowds.

The last time Iran buried a supreme leader, it was at this stage of the funeral that people were killed in a stampede. At that funeral in 1989 security forces violently beat people back from the casket.

“We have to tell America that we are a strong nation,” said Mohammad Ghasemi, 27, a dentist who studied abroad in Hungary and Russia and spoke smooth English.

“We have five or six times the history of the U.S., and Trump says he will send us back to the stone ages,” Ghasemi added, his voice incredulous as he nodded to the 250th anniversary of the U.S., which was celebrated this weekend as Iran mourned.

“It’s really rude, really rude,” he said.

By midday Monday, no serious incidents had been reported. Security forces from the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Basij paramilitary, the police and the regular army were seen securing different parts of the route Monday morning. Millions of people attended, according to Iranian state media reports Monday.

An invitation from the Iranian government, among others extended to foreign news organizations, to attend the proceedings - albeit under restricted conditions, including accompaniment by a government-provided guide and interpreter - has allowed The Washington Post its first opportunity to report from Iran since the war began. The views of people interviewed at the funeral events are unlikely to represent all of Iranian society, given the risks posed to those who have opposed or been critical of the government.

Weeks of war with Israel and the U.S. badly damaged Iran’s security forces, devastating senior leadership ranks. But the Iranian system remains intact.

Parts of Tehran not in the funeral’s immediate vicinity appeared deserted Monday morning. Many roads were shut and businesses closed in observance of the procession, but by afternoon, streets began to reopen and bumper-to-bumper traffic returned to the city’s main thoroughfares.

From Tehran, Khamenei’s body will fly to Qom; then to Iraq, where he was revered by many Shiites; and on to Mashhad, the town in eastern Iran where he was born.