Witnessing the Massive Mourning Procession Through Tehran’s Streets

People came from all sides, streaming toward Tehran’s centre, the flow swelling from trickles to rivers and finally becoming a vast human tide of mourners whose sheer momentum seemed to erase individual intent.

I joined the crowd on Monday morning, when millions gathered to mourn the late supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed at the start of the U.S.–Israeli conflict with Iran in late February.

After two days of mourning rituals in the capital, this marked the last opportunity to pay respects before the body began its journey. It would next travel to Qom, Iran’s religious‑learning hub, then to neighboring Iraq—also predominantly Shiite—and finally to Mashhad, the leader’s hometown, for burial on Thursday.

As the procession made its final pass through Tehran, it gathered at the city’s symbolic heart, Azadi Square.

There stands a tower that arches across time, its white ribs echoing kings, revolutions, victories and sorrow. Built under Iran’s last monarch, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, and once called the “Memorial of the Shah,” it was renamed Azadi—meaning “freedom”—after the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

That layered past helps explain why the procession converged on this square.

The New York Times received permission from the Iranian government to cover the ceremonies, with officials specifying which events we could attend and providing a translator and guide who stayed with us throughout.

Around Azadi Square the crowd reflected a cross‑section of Iranian society. Parents hoisted children on their shoulders or pushed them in strollers. Young women chanted while filming, sweeping their phones slowly over banners and the moving throng. Older men held portraits of the slain ayatollah. Groups of women marched beneath a massive Iranian flag, shouting “Death to Israel” and “Down with Trump.” At least one placard, promising revenge in Hebrew, could be seen in the throng.

Then came the sounds—layered upon one another until they blended into an inseparable roar.

Mournful music and elegies played continuously, while Quranic verses boomed from massive speakers. Every few minutes, chants flared up somewhere, beginning as a distant rumble lost in the general din and then rolling from one part of the crowd to another like a wave.

We pushed forward, at times questioning whether the sheer density had become unbearable. Ahead lay only more bodies melting into heat and haze. Often there was no discernible start or finish—just the feeling of moving through a sea of people.

After three hours we finally entered the square.

We asked the driver of a water truck if we could climb aboard; he agreed at once. From that vantage point the scale of the crowd became evident, though no less overwhelming.

Shortly thereafter we spotted a mobile stage truck crawling slowly around the square in a wide loop. When the crowd recognized it, their energy shifted. Voices rose into chants, and people flung whatever they had—turbans, scarves, pieces of cloth—toward the platform, hoping the items would touch the coffin and be blessed. Some succeeded, their offerings caught and tossed back by the men atop the truck; others fell short.

For many, this was the nearest they had come in days to the actual presence of the body.

The man on the water truck began to cry. A flag‑bearer next to me waved his flag more energetically. Others nearby fell silent, as if attempting to hold the moment.

For many around me, it felt like the end of an era—a farewell to a leader revered by supporters, yet whose rule had also left deep divisions and suffering. Standing there, the scene felt almost unreal, chaotic, overwhelming and faintly absurd that I was witnessing it at all.

On Monday evening I returned to Azadi Square. The crowds had dispersed, cleaners swept the pavement, and life resumed its ordinary rhythm with surprising speed.

When I voiced my surprise, someone remarked, almost offhandedly in Farsi, “It is as if no king came or no king left.”

Just like that, history moved on.

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