Iran launched a massive security operation involving the Basij militias and the Revolutionary Guards ahead of former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's funeral on July 9. Khamenei, who was killed in a U.S. targeted attack on February 28, will be laid to rest after months of delay, with public viewings to be held in the capital Tehran and several other cities.
Counterterrorism expert Dr. Mohammed Omar said that Islam forbids chemical embalming, so the body was likely kept in cold storage. "Shia jurisprudence allows postponing burial and refrigerating the body under exceptional circumstances; obtaining religious exemption for a Supreme Leader is also easy," Omar said, adding that Iranian forensic morgues routinely store bodies for months and that four months in a freezer is not unusual.
Omar also said that Khamenei was killed by a bunker-busting attack, and that the body may have been fragmented, leaving little to present. "If the regime had an intact body, it would not cancel the farewell, repeatedly change the burial site, and confirm the burial only days in advance. This suggests remains that could be preserved but not exhibited, rather than homage," he said.
Iranian officials framed the funeral as both a farewell to the leader and a show of force under the slogan "We Must Take Revenge." Yaqub Soleimani, Deputy for Cultural and Educational Affairs of the Martyrs' Foundation, said the ceremony would be held "with great splendor" and would be a "historic event" drawing one million participants. After public viewings in Tehran over the weekend, a funeral procession expected to attract 15-20 million people will be held on July 6, followed by a second ceremony the next day in Qom, one of Shia Islam's holy cities.
Omar stressed that the figures announced by the regime (20 million mourners in Tehran, 35 million nationwide, representatives from over 90 countries, 14,000 accredited journalists) were a message, not a logistical plan. "Tehran is spending everything to project continuity and power after the war that has been questioned," he said. The expert noted the leading role of the Basij and the Revolutionary Guards in the organization, calling it "a mobilization; an operation wrapped in mourning." "Highways have been turned into parking lots, each Tehran district has been assigned a province, and five days of official mourning were declared. The same apparatus that organized this week's mourning is the one that crushed the January protests and denied funerals to the families of those it killed," he added.
While senior Iraqi officials are expected to attend, other major powers will have limited representation. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was personally invited by Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, will send a lower-level delegation instead. The attendance of Georgian President Mikheil Kavelashvili was confirmed on June 30. "No major power is sending its top leader. The regional participation at the funeral of the founding successor of a regime that claims to lead a front stretching from Beirut to Sanaa reveals the loneliness behind the spectacle," Omar said.
