Overview
- Tehran’s Mosalla prayer complex opened multi-day funerary ceremonies that will keep the late leader’s and relatives’ coffins on public display through the end of the event.
- Authorities sealed off roads, deployed special forces and enforced a vehicle-free zone extending more than one kilometre around the Mosalla to control crowds and secure the ceremonies.
- Officials plan to move the remains to the religious city of Qom and to present them at Shiite shrines in Karbala and Najaf before burial in Mashhad as part of a planned regional ritual route.
- Mojtaba Khamenei, the named successor, has not appeared publicly and a younger son is reported wounded and absent, leaving leadership visibility and succession unresolved.
- Human-rights voices say the drawn-out public displays are meant to show the state remains standing, and authorities have not yet named who will lead a key public prayer during the ceremonies.