ISLAMABAD: Iran's state-run news agency said on Saturday funeral processions for its former Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, would be held in July, as mediators say an agreement to end the war is close.
The funeral, burial, and farewell ceremonies for Khamenei would take place between July 4 and 9, Iran's state-run television, IRIB, reported.
Khamenei was killed in the opening salvo of the war that Israel and the United States launched against Iran in late February. He has since been replaced by his son, Mojtaba, who is seen as even less compromising.
Funeral ceremonies for Khamenei are expected to begin in Tehran, and the procession will move to Qom, a stronghold of many senior Shiite clerics, and then to Mashhad, his birthplace, where he'll be buried at the Imam Reza Shrine, considered the holiest place among Shiite devotees.
Funerals for Khamenei's daughter and son-in-law, killed in the February strike, will also be held on the same day.
Khamenei dramatically remoulded the Islamic Republic since he took the reins after the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989. Khomeini was the fiery, charismatic ideologue who led the overthrow of the Shah and installed rule by Shiite Muslim clerics tasked with spreading religious purity.
He ended up ruling far longer than Khomeini. He greatly expanded the Shiite clerical class and built the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard into the most important body underpinning his rule. The Guard became a military and business behemoth, the country's most elite force and head of its ballistic missile arsenal, with hands across Iran's economic sectors.