Why some Iranians root for their team at the World Cup
In Seattle ahead of the match between Iran and Egypt. We heard from demonstrators why they support the Iranian team at the World Cup.
July 4 (Reuters) – Mourners filled Tehran’s vast synagogue on Saturday as Iranian supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei’s week-long funeral began with national anthems, religious dirges and readings from the Koran.
Iran is holding a mass funeral procession for Ayatollah Khamenei, whose 37-year reign ended in February with the war’s first airstrikes launched by the United States and Israel, in a show of its people’s dedication to the Islamic Republic’s theocratic state and revolutionary fervor.
Television footage showed his coffin draped in the Iranian flag and draped with a black turban. It was placed, along with four other coffins of slain family members, on a large black platform resembling the Kaaba, the cube-shaped structure at the center of Islam’s holiest site in Mecca.
The vast courtyard of the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosallah complex was filled with mourners, many waving Iranian flags and holding pictures of the slain leader.
State broadcaster Seda Va Seema reported, “On the day we said goodbye to our ‘martyrs,’ chants of ‘Death to America’ echoed through Mosala in Tehran.”
In videos posted on other state media news sites, mourners can be heard shouting: “Our slogan is one word: revenge, revenge” and “We will kill, we will kill those who killed our imam.”
A mist of water spewed out from the roof to cool the mourners in the summer heat. Khamenei’s coffin will remain in Mosala until Sunday evening.
The body was taken to Qom, Najaf and Kerbala, the Shiite heartlands of Iran and Iraq, and was scheduled to be buried Thursday in Mashhad, home to the country’s holiest pilgrimage shrine.
Late Thursday, the coffin was unveiled in front of a crowd of sobbing supporters, who continued to sway and bang their heads to mournful songs as flowers were thrown from the coffin into the crowd. On Friday, the coffin was placed in a large chapel built to honor his predecessor, Ruhollah Khomeini.
Authorities plan to mobilize millions of people into massive queues and provide transportation, food and accommodation to boost numbers.
The new supreme leader, Khamenei’s son Mojtaba Khamenei, has not been seen since being injured in the strike that killed his father.
(Reporting by Reuters; Writing by Raju Gopalakrishnan; Editing by Tom Hogue)
