Three days of public mourning in Tehran for its slain supreme leader ended with a major political spectacle the men now in charge wanted the world to see.
The hulking funeral cortège, carrying the coffins of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and four family members, inched along a 10km route – slowed, and often stopped, by millions of mourners in one of the largest public gatherings in many years.
In a week of funeral events, Monday’s march was the most significant in carefully choreographed ceremonies steeped in political messaging of resistance and revenge.
But many also stayed away, hurting from two wars in less than a year, inflation spiralling at around 80%, and the pain of January’s anti-government protests.
Some blame Khamenei, who was also the commander-in-chief, for the security crackdown which killed many thousands.
“Of course I’m not going to the funeral,” one man told us outside one of the many “mookebs”, the rest stations set up in the city and on its outskirts to provide free food and water, most of it from private donations.
“Many people don’t have work and are so unhappy,” he explained.
Aerial footage from Monday’s procession showed one of Tehran’s main arteries chock-full of loyalists consumed by grief and chanting the Islamic Republic’s signature slogans of “death to America” and “death to Israel”.
