Iran Sends Out A Defiant Message

The lengthy funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s former supreme leader, has been an elaborate and extended spectacle projecting strength, national unity, stability, continuity and vengeance after two successive wars with the United States and Israel within a year.

Iran’s uncompromising message is mainly directed at the U.S., whose military bases in the region it seeks to remove; Israel, whose very existence it wants to snuff out, and Arab Gulf states such as the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, whose alliance with the United States it hopes to demolish.

These themes have been present at Khamenei’s nation-wide funeral, an exercise in defiance.

Khamenei, 86, and several members of his family were killed in joint U.S. and Israeli air strikes on his heavily-guarded compound in central Tehran on February 28, the first day of the second war. Iran’s political and military leadership was all but decimated during these bombardments, allowing a new generation of leaders to take over.

Mojtaba Khamenei, one of his sons and his successor, was severely injured in the attack, which ignited a war that badly degraded Iran’s armed forces, smashed its defence industries, and knocked out much of its nuclear facilities, including three uranium enrichment plants.

Despite its ignominious defeat, the theocratic regime did not buckle and survived, surprising Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and U.S. President Donald Trump.

On the basis of a Mossad assessment, Netanyahu had assured Trump that the Islamic regime was weaker than at any point since the Islamic Revolution in 1979 and was therefore vulnerable.

Almost two months before the outbreak of the war, which erupted nearly a year after the 12-day conflict in June 2025, Iran was convulsed by widespread and sustained anti-government protests. These demonstrations were brutally suppressed, resulting in the deaths of thousands and perhaps tens of thousands of civilians.

The bloodbath tarnished Khamenei’s image, if not popularity. Although he was revered by many citizens, mainly poor and pious Shiite Muslims, he was disliked by upper-class secular Iranians for presiding over an authoritarian state that ruthlessly crushed dissent.

Sensing that an uprising might be imminent, Netanyahu and Trump concluded that the regime’s days were numbered, and that a new political order might emerge after nearly 50 years of dictatorship. In a boastful statement he probably regrets today, Trump announced that “help is on its way.”

At first glance, Netanyahu’s analysis seemed plausible.

Iran’s economy had been crippled by decades of American and European sanctions. Iran’s nuclear program, long a source tension, seemed to have been significantly damaged during the previous war. Its stockpile of uranium, supposedly large enough to build 10 or 11 atomic bombs if enriched to 90 percent purity, was buried under the rubble of the Isfahan nuclear plant, which had been bombed by U.S. and Israeli aircraft

Iran’s Axis of Resistance, its anti-Israel and anti American group of regional proxies consisting primarily of Hezbollah and Hamas, had been battered by Israel in wars in Lebanon and the Gaza Strip.

In Syria, Iran’s steadfast ally, President Bashar al-Assad and his repressive Baathist regime, had been swept away in December 2024.

Given all these stunning setbacks, it seemed improbable that Iran could withstand the United States’ and Israel’s destructive air campaign. And yet, the regime proved to be remarkably resilient. It survived the onslaught and remained standing following the much-violated ceasefire in early April that more or less ended the war.

Emboldened by its success in fending off its enemies, the regime stunned the United States by closing the Strait of Hormuz, an important international waterway, to most oil and natural gas tankers.

In one fell stroke, Iran struck a mighty blow to the global economy. The virtual closure of the strait, through which about 20 percent of the world’s oil and natural gas flows, was one of the reasons why Trump desperately sought a truce to extricate himself from this war.

Unlike Trump, Netanyahu wanted to press on and finish the job.

Khamenei’s choreographed funeral, which is currently taking place throughout Iran, is unfolding against this tumultuous backdrop.

In Tehran, his casket was paraded through the capital in a public procession during which fervent supporters of the regime chanted such incendiary slogans as “Death to America” and God’s curse be on Israel.”

Posters and graffiti at the Grand Mosalla, a major mosque in Tehran, demanded Trump’s and Netanyahu’s demise.

Khamenei’s funeral in Tehran reportedly attracted an estimated one million mourners. It was larger than the funeral held for General Qassem Soleimani, the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ Quds Force, who was assassinated by a U.S. drone strike in Baghdad in 2020.

By contrast, the funeral for Khamenei’s predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomenei, drew about ten million Iranians.

Later this week, Khamenei’s coffin will be transported to several cities in Iran and in neighboring Iraq associated with Shiite Islam. He will be buried in Mashhad, his hometown in the northeast, on July 9.