On February 28, on the first day of the war, a joint United States and Israeli strike killed Ali Khamenei in his Tehran compound. He was 86, and had ruled Iran for thirty-seven years. His son Mojtaba, later named to succeed him, was gravely wounded.

The burial was set for March. The war pushed it back four months. It begins now, and it will last six days.

From July 4 to July 9, Iran will stage the largest state funeral in its history. Ceremonies move across five cities and two countries: Tehran first, then Qom, then the Iraqi shrine cities of Najaf and Karbala, and finally Mashhad, where Khamenei was born and where he will be buried beside the shrine of the Eighth Imam. Officials expect fifteen to twenty million mourners across the week. The last gathering of this scale was the funeral of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, remembered for its chaos.

President Masoud Pezeshkian, parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, judiciary chief Gholam-Hossein Mohseni-Ejei. General Ahmad Vahidi, the new commander of the Revolutionary Guard, appeared beside the casket for the first time in months. More than a hundred countries were invited.

Russia sent Medvedev, Pakistan its prime minister and army chief, the Taliban its foreign minister, China a senior parliamentary figure. From the region came Iraq, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Oman. Europe was not invited, and Tehran said why: it backed the campaign. Indirect talks with Washington are set to resume on July 11, the nuclear file among them.

One man will not be there. Mojtaba Khamenei has reportedly been barred from the funeral by his own government, which fears Israel would use the occasion to kill him.

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