TEHRAN, Iran \u2014 Iran\u2019s top officials and brothers of the country\u2019s new supreme leader emerged into public view Sunday to attend the funeral prayers for the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, signaling a new confidence in their safety as calls grew for the killing of U.S. President Donald Trump.<\/p>\n
Their presence before hundreds of thousands of people in the capital Tehran would have been unthinkable during the Iran war, which saw airstrikes in its opening moments on Feb. 28 kill the 86-year-old Khamenei, his family members and other officials.<\/p>\n
Israel also targeted others who appeared publicly during the war, in at least one case likely using their public appearance to fix their position for a strike.<\/p>\n
But still unseen was Iran\u2019s new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei. He is believed to be in hiding after reportedly being wounded in the airstrike that killed his father. Israel has threatened to kill him as well as he leads a theocracy now negotiating with the United States over a permanent end to the war and over Iran strangling traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, disrupting global energy supplies.<\/p>\n
Ziba Naderi, a 42-year-old nurse attending the funeral Sunday, said Iran needed to follow whatever Mojtaba Khamenei commands in regards to the nation.<\/p>\n
\u201cI heard the call for revenge, but our leader should say what we need to do,\u201d she said. \u201cAnd we must listen to him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Ayatollah Jafar Sobhani, a 97-year-old Shiite cleric, led the prayers at Tehran\u2019s Grand Mosalla for Khamenei and his late family members.<\/p>\n
On hand were Khamenei\u2019s sons Masoud, Meysam and Mostafa, who haven\u2019t been seen since the war. Revolutionary Guard head Gen. Ahmad Vahidi, who only had been photographed for the first time since the war on Thursday, could be seen in the crowd by Associated Press journalists, flanked by plainclothes security forces as he wore a black baseball cap.<\/p>\n
Iran\u2019s President Masoud Pezeshkian, Parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf and Esmail Qaani, who leads the Guard\u2019s expeditionary Quds Force, also attended.<\/p>\n
Their appearances came as posters and graffiti at the Grand Mosalla called for the killing of Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.<\/p>\n
Mohammad Rasouli, a poet who emceed the event prior to the prayers, drew calls of \u201cDeath to America!\u201d and \u201cDeath to Israel!\u201d<\/p>\n
Speaking to the crowd over loudspeakers at the funeral, Rasouli asked, referring to Trump, \u201cWhy is the most bastard man in the world still alive?\u201d<\/p>\n
The question drew cheers from the crowd, and again when Rasouli said \u201cthe world is no longer a good place for\u201d Trump. It marked the first, direct threat to Trump\u2019s life by an official during the funeral.<\/p>\n
The American president was giving a speech at the same time across the world in Washington, D.C., for the 250th anniversary of America\u2019s founding.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had tremendous success,\u201d Trump said about the U.S. military. \u201cYou look at Venezuela, you look at Iran. We wiped it out, wiped out their military.\u201d<\/p>\n
A far-larger crowd for the funeral than the day before attended Sunday. Mourners dressed in black walked to the site, carrying banners and flags honoring Khamenei and also calling for Trump\u2019s killing.<\/p>\n
\u201cI came here to shout and seek revenge,\u201d said Gholamreza Sabooni, 29-year-old man who works in a grocery. \u201cThey killed our imam, we should kill their leader, Trump.\u201d<\/p>\n
U.S. federal authorities have been tracking Iranian threats against Trump and other administration officials for years. That stems from Trump ordering the 2020 killing of Gen. Qassem Soleimani, who had led the Quds Force. Iran repeatedly has denied plotting to kill Trump, though hard-line propaganda footage long has suggested Trump was in Tehran\u2019s crosshairs.<\/p>\n
Trump meanwhile promised to destroy Iran\u2019s very civilization during the war among a variety of other threats.<\/p>\n
Khamenei\u2019s body will be transported to cities in Iran and neighboring Iraq, with authorities planning to drive his casket and others through the streets of Tehran on Monday. Authorities have shut down streets, airspace and daily life for the mourning, which will end Thursday as he is buried at the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad, Khamenei\u2019s place of birth.<\/p>\n
Authorities offered no attendance count for the event Saturday and Sunday. Other cities across Iran also held mourning ceremonies.<\/p>\n
For now, talks over reaching a permanent end to the war are on hold until the end of the funeral. Having a major turnout could prove important as Iran tries to leverage its hold on the Strait of Hormuz in negotiations as concern lingers that Israel could attack again.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur foreign policy should not be shaped in a way that allows our martyred leader\u2019s blood to be dishonored and other countries can afford to do such things, without any serious response from our government and diplomatic system,\u201d mourner Mohammad Reza Sharifi said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"TEHRAN, Iran \u2014 Iran\u2019s top officials and brothers of the country\u2019s new supreme leader emerged into public view…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":191009,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[4],"tags":[89,56976,38,57008,34,196,37,3620,56959,2289,1974,69],"class_list":["post-191008","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tehran","tag-ayatollah-ali-khamenei","tag-ayatollah-jafar-sobhani","tag-donald-trump","tag-funeral-prayers","tag-iran","tag-iran-war","tag-israel","tag-masoud-pezeshkian","tag-mohammad-rasouli","tag-mojtaba-khamenei","tag-supreme-leader","tag-tehran"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@iran\/116867141717683889","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191008","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=191008"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/191008\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/191009"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=191008"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=191008"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/iran\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=191008"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}