Iran is memorializing Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in a weeklong funeral spectacle stretching across five cities in two countries, with millions of mourners expected to attend. The funeral is being orchestrated as a victory parade across three Iranian cities and two holy sites in neighboring Iraq, showing supporters that the cleric still hasn’t lost, even in death.

Funeral Details

The scale of the spectacle is designed to send a message to the world and to the Islamic Republic’s enemies: The regime not only survived an existential war, but will stubbornly immortalize its slain leader as a symbol of its resilience. Authorities have launched one of the largest logistical efforts in the Islamic Republic’s history, mobilizing government employees, universities, labor unions, firefighters, soldiers, aid workers, and even religious “mourning groups” to organize the funeral and manage the millions of “pilgrims” expected to travel to cities and holy sites across Iran and Iraq to bid the ayatollah farewell.

The funeral procession will wind from the east of the capital to its western edge. Khamenei’s body will then be taken for more ceremonies in the holy city of Qom before being flown to Shiite holy sites in Iraq’s Najaf and Karbala. It will then be transported to its final burial site at the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad – Khamenei’s birthplace.

Symbolism and Significance

The leader, whose assassination by the US and Israel has elevated his status, presided over some of the largest anti-regime protests in Iran’s history, brutally crushing demonstrators who often chanted for his death. In the process, he empowered the regime’s hardline base despite intense domestic and international opposition. Transporting the former supreme leader’s body to Iraq serves as a symbol of the Islamic Republic’s self-image as a borderless revolutionary force, a message it is eager to amplify after years of projecting its power in the region.

Original reporting: KTVZ (Central Oregon) — read the source article.