Iran Plans Six-Day Funeral Procession for Khamenei, Ending in Holy City of Mashhad

Iran’s former supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in U.S.-Israeli airstrikes in February, will be laid to rest on Thursday in Mashhad, the final destination of a six-day funeral procession spanning five cities.

Mashhad, a northeastern metropolis of three million and Iran’s second-largest city after Tehran, is Khamenei’s birthplace. It holds profound significance for Shiite Muslims as the country’s holiest city, revered for its association with Imam Reza, the eighth of twelve imams considered the spiritual successors to the Prophet Muhammad.

According to Shiite tradition, Imam Reza was poisoned on a caliph’s orders in the ninth century in a nearby village and buried in Mashhad, making him the only one of the twelve imams entombed in Iran. Authorities say the sprawling shrine complex, with its towering golden dome and intricate tilework, draws millions of pilgrims annually. The complex dates back to the ninth century, according to Iranian officials.

Burying Khamenei within the shrine complex underscores his status as a paramount religious figure, said Roham Alvandi, a professor of Iranian history at the London School of Economics. “It is common for Persian monarchs to be buried in such holy shrines in Iran and Iraq, in proximity to the Shiite imams, much as medieval European monarchs were typically buried in cathedrals and abbeys,” he noted.

On Thursday, a funeral procession will wind through Mashhad’s streets to the shrine complex, state media reported. The route from Tehran also passes through Iraqi cities housing Shiite shrines—a detail Sajjad Rizvi, a professor of Islamic intellectual history at the University of Exeter, called notable. He observed that the itinerary mirrors the routes increasingly favored for the funeral processions of Shiite Islam’s most revered leaders, citing the recent funeral of Ayatollah Sheikh Muhammad Ishaq al-Fayyad, which visited the same shrine cities.

“It’s significant that the funeral is taking this route because it’s making the claim that Mr. Khamenei was a leading religious figure like Sheikh al-Fayyad,” Rizvi said.

Mashhad is deeply intertwined with the conservative religious politics of the Khamenei family. Khamenei’s son and successor, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, was born there, as was former President Ebrahim Raisi, who served under the late supreme leader. Raisi was interred at the Imam Reza shrine following his death in a 2024 helicopter crash.

The city has also been a flashpoint for dissent. In January, anti-government protests erupted across Iran, with large crowds in Mashhad chanting against the establishment; security forces responded with a brutal crackdown, according to video footage verified by The New York Times.

For Thursday’s burial, the government anticipates more than a million regime supporters will gather in Mashhad to mourn Khamenei’s death.

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