Hundreds of thousands of mourners began a dayslong funeral Saturday for Iran’s late supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, beating their chests in sorrow before the glass case containing his flag-draped coffin in Tehran and calling for revenge against Israel and the United States.
Funeral Proceedings
The funeral for Khamenei, who ruled Iran for decades before being killed at age 86 in a Feb. 28 airstrike in the opening moments of the war in Iran, could provide a boost for the country’s theocracy and its new supreme leader, his son Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei.
During the ceremony, Iran’s top negotiator issued a warning to France and the United Kingdom over their comments about potentially launching joint patrols in the waterway, the narrow mouth of the Persian Gulf through which a fifth of all oil and natural gas once passed in peacetime.
International Tensions
The American president was not forgotten in Tehran. In the crowd at the Grand Mosalla, several mourners held a large flag that read: “#KillTrump.” Iran’s chief negotiator, Kazem Gharibabadi, criticized a joint statement overnight by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer and French President Emmanuel Macron, which suggested their militaries stood ready to patrol the Strait of Hormuz.
Control of the strait has been a major point of leverage for Iran, which has suggested it wants to charge vessels passing through it, upending decades of the world considering it an international waterway.
Original reporting: 40/29 / KHBS (NW Arkansas) — read the source article.
