Khamenei and several members of his family, whose coffins were at the center of the procession, were killed in an airstrike at the start of the war launched against the Islamic Republic by the United States and Israel on February 28.

The massive turnout was encouraged by the Iranian regime to present what it calls a display of the country’s continued strength and unity, as it conducts negotiations for a permanent end to the war.

Calls for revenge over Khamenei’s death

Iranian state television showed helicopter footage of a crowd stretching from Tehran’s Azadi (Freedom) Square for several kilometers down the road of the same name.

Khamenei’s coffin, as well as those of his relatives killed in the airstrike, was transported on a truck decorated with the kind of ornamental latticework used around an imam’s shrine. He was 86 at the time of his death.

Many people alongside the truck and elsewhere along the procession route carried placards, signs and banners calling for the death of US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Water mixed into mist was sprayed over people taking part in the procession to cool them because of the high temperatures.

The procession was set to move through Tehran for 12 hours before reaching its destination at Mehrabad International Airport, according to General Hasan Hasanzadeh of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), who is overseeing the event. The official mourning period for Khamenei began on Saturday and will end on Thursday with Khamenei’s burial at the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad, his birthplace.

The new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei is notable for his absence.

Ali Khamenei’s son, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who was appointed to succeed his father as supreme leader, has so far not appeared at any of the funeral ceremonies. He is believed to be in hiding after reportedly being seriously wounded in the airstrike that killed his father.

Israel has threatened to kill him, as it has done with several prominent Iranian figures in the past. Three of Ali Khamenei’s other sons made a rare public appearance at Sunday’s funeral.

Talks between the United States and Iran to end the war appear to have been suspended until the funeral events for Ali Khamenei are over.

So far, the negotiations have focused on issues such as reopening the Strait of Hormuz, a vital oil and gas shipping route that has effectively been closed by Iran during the conflict, and Tehran’s nuclear program, which the United States says is aimed at developing nuclear weapons, something Iran denies.

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