TEHRAN ― Tens of thousands of mourners streamed on foot to the Grand Mosalla religious complex in Tehran on Saturday as Iran mourned its supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was assassinated in an airstrike on the first day of the U.S.-Israeli war.
The huge outpouring to view the caskets of the slain leader and some of his family members, positioned at the front of a prayer hall, is part of five days of somber funeral rites that will stretch across five cities and into Iraq, before Khamenei is buried in Mashhad, his hometown.
The public display of lamentation and bereavement was an opportunity for collective closure after some of the most perilous months in the Islamic republic’s history, but also a forceful show of defiance from a system badly battered but very much still standing.
The WAPO is mourning far more for Khamenei than they ever will for Trump.
