Juan Cole
Informed Comment / July 5, 2026
Ann Arbor – Delegations of government officials from 30 countries and of religious NGOs and individuals from 90 nations of the world attended the mourning in Tehran of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the late clerical leader of Iran whom Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump assassinated on February 28, 2026, along with one of his daughters, a grandson, the wife of his son (the current clerical Leader, Mojtaba), his daughter-in-law Zahra Haddad-Adel, and a son-in-law.
It was an astonishing outpouring of support for Iran and a clear rebuke to Trump and Netanyahu.
Russia’s Channel One, according to BBC Monitoring, spoke of “a hundred countries, half the world” being present. The BBC foreign press round-up quoted Russia’s NTV as saying that the “the global majority” is at the side of the “barbarically killed” Khamenei’s coffin and that “the world is tired of the West’s hegemony, constant trampling of the UN Charter, and contempt for international law.”
The multi-day period of mourning began Saturday, with Khamenei’s body lying in state at the Mosalla Mosque. On Monday July 6, mourners will walk several miles from Imam Husayn Square to Azadi square in a funeral procession. On Tuesday, the body will be brought to the holy city of Qom for funeral prayers. On July 8, the ceremonies will shift to the Iraqi holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, at Iraq’s request. On July 9, the burial will be held at Mashhad, Khamenei’s hometown.
Foreign dignitaries came Friday to extend their condolences.
The international showing was all the more remarkable because Iran’s fundamentalist Shiite government is so widely disliked. Aside from the countries with substantial Shiite populations for whom Khamenei was a sort of saint, you have a feeling that countries are participating not from any love of of the late clerical Leader but to show disapproval of the Mafia-like tactics adopted by Tel Aviv and Washington, of simply rubbing out rival leaders from the sky. Moreover, many of those rivals must realize that if this practice becomes normalized, they could be next. The opprobrium in which many countries now hold Israel in the wake of the Gaza genocide, the attack on Lebanon, and the war on Iran, also likely played a role in these funereal politics.
Iranian officials for their part are using the funeral as an opportunity to cement diplomatic ties with friendly countries, from Armenia to China.
Eight heads of state came, including those of Pakistan, Tajikistan, Armenia and Georgia, as well as the president of Iraq.
In addition, high-level delegations arrived from the Russian, Chinese, Turkish, Indian, Bangladeshi and Afghanistan governments, including foreign ministers or officials from foreign ministries. Former Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was there, as was the vice-chairman of the standing committee of China’s National People’s Congress, He Wei.
Officials came from Nicaragua, Cuba, and Senegal according to BBC Monitoring.
Twelve parliamentary delegations attended, including those of Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan.
Iraq and Yemen have Shiite-majority governments, and Lebanon is about 1/3 Shiite, so those are no surprise. Oman and Qatar have a history of mediating between Iran and the outside world, so those are expected, as well, even though Iran did bomb both of them during the 39-day war. A big surprise was that the Saudi royal family, King Salman and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman, sent their condolences with Deputy Foreign Minister Waleed Elkhereiji. Riyadh was also bombed by Iran during the war. Finally, the speaker of the Egyptian Senate, Isam al-Din Farid, attended.
Egypt, Pakistan, Turkey and Qatar formed an informal negotiating quartet during the war, so Cairo has a renewed relationship with Tehran despite decades of suspicion. Moreover, Egypt suffered mightily from the war, with high gasoline prices and the threat that the Iran-allied Houthis in Yemen would close shipping in the Red Sea, an economic lifeline for Egypt, for which Suez Canal tolls are a major source of income. Although Egypt cooperates with Israel against Muslim fundamentalist guerrilla groups, it was not happy about the war that Netanyahu and Trump launched, which hurt it economically.
Religious figures and organizations came from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Morocco, Spain, Ecuador, Bolivia and Indonesia as well as from Shiite communities in Iraq, Lebanon, Yemen and Afghanistan.
Khamenei’s brutal crackdown on protests in January had harmed his domestic and international reputation. Israel and the US made him a martyr, not only inside Iran but in half the world.
Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment; he is Richard P. Mitchell Distinguished University Professor in the History Department at the University of Michigan
