Iran Will Mark the Fourth of July With a State Funeral for a Leader Killed in February

Coincidence or a troll? The Islamic Republic’s five-day funeral procession for slain leader Ali Khamenei will be launched Saturday, when America celebrates its 250th birthday. In Islam, as in Judaism, the dead are meant to be interred quickly after their demise. The late Khamenei was killed in an Israeli-American air strike on February 28, at the start of the two countries’ military campaign. Fear of additional targeting of officials prevented the regime from burying its revered supreme leader for months, as Khamenei’s body was secretly kept at an undisclosed location. The July 4-9 multi-city funeral is expected to become a display of regime strength, as top mullahs pay final respect to their revered supreme leader. The event will also serve as a show of fealty to Khamenei’s son and successor, Mojtaba. Yet Tehran officials indicate the new supreme leader will be absent. The funeral is “designed to be a show of regime power,” the Tehran-born Iran watcher at Tel Aviv University’s Institute for National Security Studies, Beni Sabti, tells the Sun. “It’s not so much about Ali Khamenei, but about his successor. The king is dead, long live the king. You’ll hear a lot of ‘Mojtaba, Mojtaba’ chants.”The selection of July 4 as the funeral date is raising suspicion that the event is also designed to show up America, the country the regime has long tagged as the Great Satan and now blames for the death of Khamenei. “I haven’t seen anything to indicate that having it on July 4 was intentional, but it’s definitely something that crossed my mind,” a correspondent for the anti-regime website Iran International, Negar Mojtahedi, tells the Sun. “You’d think that they would have thought about that ahead of time, and that it was part of the deliberations.” The funeral, though, will take place in the middle of the Muslim calendar’s month of Muharram, which in Shiite tradition is dedicated to mourning. The event is expected to be secured by tens of thousands of enforcers, to ensure against domestic interference from regime opponents. Mostly, though, the scheduling indicates that the regime now feels safe from external strikes. “They would only have a funeral if they believed they would not be attacked by Israel or America,” a top Iran watcher at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Behnam Ben Taleblu, tells the Sun.Tehran officials are increasingly convinced that President Trump, despite occasional hints to the contrary, is unlikely to order a return to military action. That assessment, in the eyes of the mullahs, amounts to a victory over America and Israel. “I swear by god that this document proves that America was defeated,” the top negotiator with Washington, parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, said on national television, waving a copy of the June 17 Iranian-American memorandum of understanding.A small number of world leaders are expected to attend the funeral, including Prime Minister Shabaz Sharif of Pakistan; Russia’s former president, Dmitry Medvedev; and a top Beijing legislator, He Wei. Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who was invited, declined to go, sending a low-level Delhi official instead. The supreme leader’s representative in India, Ayatollah Hakim Elahi, said Mojtaba Khamenei will be absent at his father’s funeral. He cited “severe security threats,” India Today reports. The 56-year-old Mojtaba Khamanei is believed to have suffered severe injuries and has not been seen in public since the February 28 strike on a Tehran compound that killed his father, regime leaders, and family members. Among the dead were Mr. Khamanei’s children and wife.Mr. Khamenei was notably absent Wednesday at a small memorial service for his late wife, Zahra Haddad Adel. The only family member seen in a video recording of that service was the deceased’s father, Gholam-Ali Haddad-Adel.Other top regime leaders have also been shy of appearing in public but are now increasingly visible. The commander in chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Ahmad Vahidi, who is considered one of the most powerful among regime insiders, was seen in television coverage of a committee planning this weekend’s funeral. The expected absence of Mojtaba Khamenei from the funeral may have as much to do with appearances as security. “Physical disability is a sign of weakness in that culture,” Mr. Sabti says.

Iran Will Mark the Fourth of July With a State Funeral for a Leader Killed in February

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