Iranians poured in vast numbers on to the central thoroughfare of Tehran on the fourth day of mourning for the assassinated former supreme leader, Ali Khamenei, claiming their defiance through months of on-off war had only made them stronger as many called for revenge.
For those in the procession, it was as much a display of patriotism as mourning: a demonstration that Iran, as an ancient civilisation, had uniquely taken on the world’s greatest superpower and survived. “We the people are Iran’s true missiles,” one banner read.
Vengeful chants against the US president, Donald Trump, could be heard while walking down the lightly policed and tree-lined Azadi Street towards Revolution Square. But there were also a sense of quiet release for some of those present, as if this was their first moment to share their survival– a moment to catch breath and continue, proud of Iran’s identity if not their government. “Welcome to our Iran” was the most common greeting to the stranger in their midst.
Iranian officials are skilled at putting on a show, and all the ingredients of an Iranian march were on display. Drums and chants filled the air, vast flags were waved from lorrieswhile many placards were written in English and Farsi. Families with children in buggies and elderly people in wheelchairs joined men in “Louis Vuitton” T-shirts, and women with sequined chadors or embroidered black visors on the procession. Everyone was lightly sprayed with water to be cooled from the 36C heat.
It was a sharp contrast to the sadness and religiosity of the prayers in the Grand Mosalla mosque at the start of the six-day funeral for Khamenei. “Of course, Iran has won the war, take a look at the population in the streets. If Trump dies today, will people attend his funeral,” asked Fatima Zadeh, who was part of the procession. “I want the war to restart, we want to destroy the oppressors and we are after revenge. These people are here not to mourn and shed tears, they came here to become united and gain strength,” she said.
Ali Sayadian, a cleric from Yasuj also showed little sign of forgiveness, and said he had travelled 1,000km to Tehran because he was “indebted” to Khamenei’s leadership that he said had made Iran powerful. “We want revenge,” he said. “Someone has come here and killed our leader in his house with his family, our great man. It is our right to want to exact revenge.”
He claimed the procession had a message for the whole world and those who doubted the internal support for the Islamic Republic. “These people you see on the street? You cannot say they are all poor, you cannot say they are all rich, you cannot say they are from one specific geographical location, they have come from all over Iran. This is the voice of the Iranian nation,” he said.
Inevitably those that travel miles to attend a funeral of the supreme leader – one expert claimed the average distance was a 1,000 miles – are a self-selecting sample. Those that chose not to attend may have a different view of the choices the supreme leader had required Iran to make in search of its independence. Even those in the procession may have divergent views or their own reasons for attending.
One young woman wearing a chador walked alongside me asking under her breath urgently to speak. “Do you know about the shah and the crown prince? There is still a revolution happening. We will not lose. It is not over,” she whispered, before she sensed too many ears may be listening and vanished into the crowd.
But others were full of remorse that they had not done more to protect the supreme leader, a man they regarded as a father of the nation. Maryam Ghiyasi, a doctor, said: “Our leaders called on us to keep our head up. We are ashamed because we did not do enough when he was alive. He was a leader that wanted to make Iran strong”.
Her husband, Hamid Razavi, an engineer, praised Iran’s leadership for being the first in a 200 hundred years to sign a peace treaty that did not see Iran giving up foreign land.
Ali Hovayzavi, a software engineer for accountancy firms, said: “I am here for so many reasons – to make some people hopeful and to make some people hopeless”. He said he had narrowly avoided the bombs in Tehran. “I was not frightened. Everyone somewhere will die and no one except God specifies when and where and how you die. Even if there are many bombs surrounding me, and God does not want me to die, I will not die.”
Some in the procession, meanwhile, accosted reporters to say Iran’s leaders now needed to race to build a nuclear weapon. “Would Japan have been attacked at Hiroshima if it had nuclear weapons?” asked Reza Aziz. “Would Russia be safe after the Ukraine invasion? Why is it OK for Israel to have nuclear weapons and not to sign the nuclear non proliferation treaty?”
Standing in the shade of a bus stop with a “kill Trump” poster, Mohammad Mousabvi, 50, a gymnastics coach, saw this as a clash of civilisations. “Yes I came to preserve the memory of our imam, but I also came to confront Trump. This road is the pathway of the Islamic civilisation and with the help of God it will prevail over the civilisation of neoliberalism.
“We have taught and continued to teach the westerners that western civilisation is nothing but a dead end. The revenge of our leader is through decimating Israel and America for ever. Our civilisation is based on theprophet Mohammed, Moses, Jesus, but the western civilisation is made of the people of Epstein Island.” All this was spoken in a tone of complete equanimity.
Moftabva Karbvasi, a professor at the medical school in Isfahan, standing outside Tehran University’s gates, delivered a short dissertation on what he said was the US’s role in building Islamic State in a bid to discredit Islam in the west. “But the world is becoming more familiar with our religion day by day, and we can use this moment when the world looks again at Iran, because for the first time America knows it dare not attack us again,” Karbvasi said.
