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As the multipurpose, multinational funeral of Iran’s former supreme leader Ali Khamenei moved to the Jamkaran mosque in the holy city of Qom, and then to Najaf in Iraq, Iran’s leadership was weighing the mandate it had been given by the millions who have taken to the streets of Tehran over the past three days.
Some hailed the moment as a referendum from the streets showing support for the clerical establishment, and called for the strategy of confrontation with the west to be intensified. Others said it was more about a wider national pride that was conditional on demands for change and an end to the war being met.
Overall, government sources believe they have successfully managed to organise mass shows of support, without disorder or signs of coercive manipulation that the western media – permitted into Iran for the occasion along with social media influencers – had been unable to ignore.
The same appeared to be true in Qom, where Khamenei’s body had been flown in by helicopter and the Jamkaran mosque reached capacity seven hours before morning prayers started. The prayer was read in a choking voice by Ayatollah Javadi Amoli, a leading Iranian conservative philosopher.
An inevitable numbers game has begun over the turnout at the funeral. Estimates for the Tehran leg vary from 350,000 to 35 million, confirming humanity’s tendency to see what it wants to see. The Financial Times, to the pleasure of the government, reported that as many as 12 million people attended. But at a minimum the support in Tehran bore comparison to the funeral of Iran’s first supreme leader, Ruhollah Khomeini, in 1989, when between 5 and 7 million people from a population of 53 million took to the streets.
Undoubtedly, successive false turns, economic travails and political repression during Khamenei’s 36-year rule damaged the regime’s support base. But it would be off the mark to treat those in the procession as bots in human form or the urban poor in need of a free sandwich. Many were highly educated and wanted to show their opposition to what they regarded as the extrajudicial killing of their leader, regardless of their broader views of the regime.
Mohammad Ali Kadivar, an associate professor of international relations at Boston College, a research university in Massachusetts, said the funeral could be best understood as what he termed “a major episode of state-led mobilisation”.
He said: “Since 1979, state-led mobilisation has been one of the central pillars of the regime’s power. The state has built a dense infrastructure through mosques, the Basij, schools, universities, workplaces, state media, veterans’ organisations and war commemoration networks. These institutions help the government organise public participation and project images of popular support at critical moments.
“Infrastructure is only one part of the story. The Islamic republic also has a real social base. This base is not a majority of Iranian society, and Iran remains deeply divided, but it is large, organised, ideologically committed and consistently open to mobilisation. Funerals, commemorations and wartime gatherings make that support visible. They show that the regime’s presence in the streets is not simply imposed from above; it also draws on constituencies that support the system and see themselves as defending the revolution, the state and the country against external threat.”
Reza Nasri, a lawyer close to the Iranian government, said the images were not of a broken people and they confirmed that the US had “never understood what it was dealing with” when it went to war with Iran.
“This was one of the largest human gatherings on Earth,” he said. “It’s a civilisation expressing itself in full, with all its grief, its pride and its cohesion. These are millions who chose, freely and defiantly, to pour into the streets to mourn their leader on their own terms.”
He said the Trump administration’s strategy “did not radicalise them against their government. It did not hollow them out. It did not manufacture the desperation Washington needed. Four decades of sanctions, two wars in the region, maximum pressure, currency warfare, and a secretary of defence openly threatening boots on the ground, and this is what it produced: a people more visibly unified than almost any nation on Earth can claim to be.”
Pursuing a similar theme, Hossein Rouyvaran, a professor of political science at Tehran University, said: “The biggest problem of the west is all their theories are materialistic, but what happens in Tehran is beyond mundane materialism. Millions come to Tehran and sleep in the streets, and that suggests there is a connection between the leader and the people that is not materialistic.”
He said the war had changed the social contract. Far from cementing divisions, “those who had been in opposition before are now under the Iranian flag”.
Some aspects of the canonisation of Khamenei have teetered on the absurd. The justice minister, Amin Hossein Rahimi, for instance, said the judiciary had laid the groundwork for Iranians to file lawsuits and complaints with court lawyers in domestic and international forums over “mental and psychological harm resulting from the loss of the leader”. More seriously, Rouyvaran said the marches would legitimise the government and give it a freer negotiating hand with the US.
But the government has its fractures, and with so much yet to be negotiated, including the ceasefire in Lebanon, the governorship of the strait of Hormuz and the monitoring of Iran’s civil nuclear programme, it is possible the advocates of confrontation will gain the upper hand. Activity around the strait over the past 48 hours, including gunfire aimed at Qatari LNG tankers, suggests Iran is not fully relaxing its grip on the strategic waterway.
The foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi – seen riding helmetless on a motorbike to the funeral procession – knows he also has to ride a political tiger in the form of demands for revenge ringing in the streets. Responding to Donald Trump’s familiar threats to annihilate Iran in an afternoon, Araghchi acknowledged the importance of the crowd.
“Millions of proud Iranians rallied in unity to honour Grand Ayatollah Khamenei and his legacy,” he said. “Neither them nor our brave armed forces are moved by any threats. Paragraph 13 of the memorandum of understanding is clear: negotiations on final deal will not commence if threats continue. Honour your signature.”
Abdollah Ramezanzadeh, a retired assistant professor in the faculty of law and political science at Tehran University, expressed concern over “the stage-managing efforts by state TV to seek revenge and reject negotiation and peace”.
He added: “If they’re coordinated and part of a psychological warfare strategy, that’s good, but if they’re a deliberate project by extremists to drag the country into war and render negotiations ineffective, stop them, as they’re targeting the very foundation of the country.”
Hesamoddin Ashna, an adviser to the reformist former president Hassan Rouhani, said: “If we cherish that national presence [then] we [should] consider the united and diverse nation as the holder of power, and employ justice and rationality to witness the resurgence of Iran once again.”
Some argued that if the funeral was a true affirmation of national cohesion, the past presidents Mohammad Khatami, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Rouhani would not have been excluded from the ceremonies.
Another absentee was Ali Asghar Hijazi, the deputy chief of Khamenei’s office and one of the officials closest to him for three decades. It is said that after the bombing of Khamenei’s residence, he was one of those opposed to the elevation of Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, as his successor on the grounds that, according to Khamenei’s will, his children did not have the right to enter politics.
All that can be said for now is that the battle for the soul of Iran, subterranean and in the streets, is entering a new phase.
