Iran begins Khamenei’s funeral 126 days after assassination

…staging a carefully choreographed display of national unity and defiance just four months after U.S. and Israeli airstrikes killed the longtime leader.

The funeral for Khamenei, who ruled Iran for decades before he was killed at age 86 in a Feb. 28 airstrike in the opening moments of the Iran war…

In a televised address, the Israeli prime minister ... indicated that the strikes had killed Iran’s supreme leader... Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, had earlier claimed to NBC News that Khamenei and president Masoud Pezeshkian were alive 'as far as I know.'

Iran’s supreme leader was killed that morning in the opening barrage, after a joint U.S. and Israeli aerial assault targeted military and government sites across the country. Trump confirmed the death in a post on Truth Social.

Published July 4, 2026 ... Iran launched an elaborate six-day funeral for former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on Saturday ... State media showed five caskets draped in Iranian flags, including a small coffin containing the body of Khamenei’s 1-year-old granddaughter, whom Iranian officials said was killed alongside him in the Feb. 28 strike.

TEHRAN — Iran began a dayslong funeral Saturday for the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei ... Khamenei, who led Iran for nearly four decades, was killed on Feb. 28 when the U.S. and Israel jointly launched the war.

Khamenei was killed in U.S.-Israeli airstrikes on Feb. 28, and his funeral is to last from July 4 until July 9. 'The body of the martyred Leader of the Islamic Revolution has arrived at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla,' IRNA wrote on Telegram.

Details have been announced for the upcoming two-day public farewell and funeral ceremonies ... with the event expected to attract up to 20 million people. (Brigadier General Hassan Hassanzadeh, IRGC Tehran commander, in a televised interview).

Mohammad Amin Tavakkoli-Zadeh, Tehran’s deputy mayor for social and cultural affairs, said authorities were preparing for between 15 million and 20 million participants in the capital, according to Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency.

Iranian officials say they expect between 15 and 20 million people just in Tehran over the coming three days to pay respects ... (report cites French news agency reporting from the scene and municipal projections).

The report said officials had spoken of as many as 20 million people attending, a figure that is difficult to verify and is often used by Iranian authorities to portray state ceremonies as displays of mass support.

Tehran province has over 12 million inhabitants (2016 census; provincial estimates commonly cited in media range ~12–14 million); Tehran metropolitan and city population figures commonly reported are lower than 20 million, making a claim of 20 million people in Tehran alone difficult to reconcile with standard demographic estimates.