Iran buried Ayatollah Ali Khamenei this week in a funeral designed to be read. His casket travelled from Tehran to Qom, across the border to Najaf and Karbala, and finally to Mashhad for burial beside the eighth Shia imam. The casket was draped in the red Ya Hussein flag flown from the Karbala shrine itself. A giant clenched fist rose in Enghelab Square, framed by images of ballistic missiles; banners in three languages carried the funeral’s motto: We must rise. The ceremonies were timed to coincide with Muharram, the month of mourning for Imam Hussain’s martyrdom, and also the 250th anniversary of American independence.

None of this is accidental. As the political scientist Lisa Wedeen observed of Assad’s Syria, authoritarian states demand that citizens act as if they believe, because the public performance of belief is itself a form of control. The regime does not need every mourner to grieve. It needs every mourner to be seen grieving. The week’s ceremonies are a study in symbolic inversion. Khamenei was killed in the opening strikes of a war that shattered a deterrent architecture........

© Indian Express