Giant portraits of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran\u2019s late supreme leader killed in US-Israeli air strikes, have been hung from Tehran\u2019s Grand Mosalla as workers raced to prepare for his grand funeral ceremony.<\/p>\n
His funeral, initially delayed at the height of the Middle East war, will take place as Iran and the United States observe a fragile ceasefire after signing a preliminary deal to halt the conflict.<\/p>\n
Khamenei, a spiritual figure for many Shias, was killed aged 86 at his compound in the centre of the Iranian capital on February 28, the first day of the war.<\/p>\n
His public funeral will begin on Saturday, with his body lying in state at the colossal complex in central Tehran that hosts major Friday prayers, official ceremonies and religious gatherings.<\/p>\n
The bodies of his slain relatives will also be presented.<\/p>\n
The ceremonies are expected to draw between 15 and 20 million mourners, according to officials, which would make it the biggest state funeral in the country\u2019s history.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Giant portraits of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran\u2019s late supreme leader killed in US-Israeli air strikes, have been hung…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185597,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[799,6455,55739,89,19794,54,50318,34,94,7071,49,5752,650,2168,55,69,51],"class_list":["post-185596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tehran","tag-afghanistan","tag-agence-france-presse","tag-ali-akbar-pourjamshidian","tag-ayatollah-ali-khamenei","tag-esmaeil-baqaei","tag-europe","tag-imam-reza","tag-iran","tag-iraq","tag-mashhad","tag-middle-east","tag-mojtaba","tag-pakistan","tag-qom","tag-russia","tag-tehran","tag-united-states"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116843485769472007","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185596\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}