Iran's Supreme Leader Khamenei Honored in Multi-City Funeral After February Airstrike

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and four family members were killed in a US-Israeli airstrike on February 28, 2026. Massive funeral processions began July 7 in Tehran, Qom, and Mashhad—routing mourning through Iran's political, clerical, and devotional centers. The multi-city sequence echoes state funerals for Khomeini and Soleimani but precedes, not resolves, the succession question: Iran's Assembly of Experts has not yet formally opened the process to select a new Supreme Leader.