Tens of thousands of Iranians thronged a vast outdoor prayer complex in Tehran on Saturday to view the coffins of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the supreme leader killed at the start of the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, and his family.

Dressed ​in black and draped in the red, white and green flags of the Islamic Republic of Iran, mourners held up portraits of Khamenei and his son and successor, Mojtaba, Reuters reported.

In a show of ‌public devotion to the Islamic Republic’s theocratic state and revolutionary zeal, Iran is staging a week of mass funeral processions for the supreme leader killed in February by the opening airstrikes of the war.

After a day lying in state indoors for senior Iranian leaders and foreign officials to visit, Khamenei’s coffin was put on display under glass outdoors, along with those of his daughter, son-in-law, daughter-in-law and 14-month-old granddaughter.

There has still been no public sighting or image released of his son, the new leader, said to have been injured in the same ​attack.

Mourners filed into the vast courtyard of the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla, beating their chests, wailing and waving the banners of the Islamic Republic. Women dressed in black chadors wore white visors or held umbrellas ​to shield from the hot mid-morning sun.

“Let us wail!” a compere encouraged the crowds through a loudspeaker. Chants of “Death to America” echoed through the huge prayer hall.

BLOOD FEUD

“Everyone here ⁠has come to avenge the blood of their supreme leader,” Arash Rahimi, 40, told Reuters in the crowd. “As our leader has said, we have a blood feud with the United States. Our relations with the United States will ​never be good.”

The funeral is taking place at a critical moment for Iran, with its clerical rulers, backed by the military, buoyed from having survived the onslaught with their ruling system intact.

The war has been paused for a ceasefire ​under an agreement with Washington that Iran’s authorities say will ultimately bring huge economic benefits, in line with what they describe as a victory over a superpower.

The Axios news website quoted U.S. President Donald Trump as saying peace talks had been paused for a week for the events surrounding the funeral.

With Iran’s leaders all attending, Washington could take them all out with “one shot”, it quoted Trump as saying: “But we are not going to do that because then we would have nobody to negotiate with.”

Trump also told the news outlet that ​he was surprised to see some Iranians crying at the funeral, saying he thought people hated Khamenei. “Maybe it’s fake tears,” he said.

Iran’s embassy in Armenia reacted to Trump’s remarks in a post on X: “You don’t understand these things ​because you have neither civilization, nor history, nor honor.”

Within Iran, beyond the displays of solidarity with the leadership, it remains impossible to assess how deeply public loyalty runs across a country of 90 million people.

Weeks before the war, hundreds of thousands of ‌Iranians demonstrated against ⁠the government in protests that were put down in a violent crackdown in which thousands were killed. But there has been little or no public sign of such dissent since the U.S. and Israeli attacks began.

During the war, more than 3,000 people were killed including many of Iran’s most senior politicians and military commanders. Military bases and major infrastructure projects were destroyed causing billions of dollars in damage.

But Iran successfully struck U.S. bases in the region, inflicted pain on the Gulf Arab countries that host them, and asserted its control of the Strait of Hormuz, causing a spike in global energy prices which Trump said led him to push faster for peace.

The interim deal reached last month includes the ​unfreezing of billions of dollars in Iranian assets held ​abroad, and waivers from financial sanctions that had brought ⁠Iran’s economy to its knees.

SHI’ITE MARTYRDOM

In Iran’s theocratic system, Khamenei was not only head of state and leader of a revolutionary movement, but the earthly representative for Shi’ite Islam’s last imam, a holy figure who disappeared in the ninth century.

His death in an enemy attack plays into a long tradition of martyrdom and ritual mourning, dating to the ​seventh-century death in battle of the Prophet Mohammad’s grandson Hussein, which divided Islam into its Shi’ite and Sunni branches.

Burials are meant to be conducted within a day ​of death in Islam, but because ⁠of the risks of holding a big funeral during the war it was postponed until after last month’s interim truce deal was agreed.

Khamenei’s coffin was unveiled late on Thursday. On Friday it was laid in state in the great prayer hall built to honour his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, where it will remain until Sunday evening.

After what authorities are billing as a massive procession in central Tehran on Monday, the remains will be taken to the seminary city of Qom, the centre of ⁠Iran’s Shi’ite hierarchy, ​for ceremonies on Tuesday.

From there the body will be flown to Iraq for ceremonies in the two Shi’ite holy shrine cities of Najaf ​and Kerbala on Wednesday. The body will return to Iran on Thursday for another procession in Mashhad, to be buried near the tomb of another of the mediaeval Shi’ite imams.

Authorities plan to mobilise millions of people for big processions over the coming days, offering transport, food and lodging.

Iran and the United States concluded ​a round of indirect talks on Wednesday with no sign they had made headway toward a lasting peace, focusing instead on ‌issues that they said had been resolved when an interim agreement was announced two weeks ago, Reuters reported.

Sources familiar with the discussions said negotiators for the two countries spent two days in Doha discussing maritime traffic in the Strait of Hormuz and unfreezing Iran’s funds, two critical issues under the initial agreement.

The next meeting will take place after funeral processions for ​Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is due to be buried on July 9, Qatar’s Foreign Ministry said.

The Doha discussions ​produced “positive progress” on issues related to the memorandum that halted the war in June and were “building on the outcomes” of ⁠a summit in Switzerland, the ministry spokesperson said in a post on X.

In Washington, US President Donald Trump said the two sides were making progress ​on possible limits to Iran’s nuclear program — the main reason he launched the war along with Israel in February. “The denuclearization of Iran is moving along well,” ​he told reporters. “They’ve had very good meetings, and we’ll see.”

But the sources said the nuclear program did not come up in the talks, which were technical in nature.

US Vice President JD Vance said that matter would be addressed later. “Obviously, we’re worried about the nuclear issue, we’re going to start talking about that,” he told reporters.

American and Iranian negotiators held ​separate meetings with Qatari and Pakistani mediators, Qatar’s foreign ministry said.

Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and top US envoy Steve Witkoff, dispatched to the region for ​what the White House had billed as “high-level” talks, did not attend the sessions, according to a source who spoke on condition of anonymity, read the report.

The leader of Iran’s delegation, Deputy ‌Foreign Minister ⁠Kazem Gharibabadi, said the talks concluded. Neither side said whether they had managed to bridge any of their differences.

The initial deal calls for Iran and the United States to allow shipping to resume through the Strait of Hormuz, which handled one-fifth of global oil and liquid natural gas trade before the war. Though traffic has partially resumed, the status of the strategic waterway remains unclear and the two countries exchanged strikes last weekend following an ​Iranian attack on a cargo ship.

​Iran is determined to win international ⁠recognition of its control over the strait even if it has to do so by force, two senior Iranian sources said, and has repeatedly said it will assess tolls on shipping starting in mid-August, after a toll-free period specified ​by the initial agreement expires.

Trump’s comments on Wednesday played down the possibility of a return to all-out war ​with Iran. “I think they’ve ⁠come a long way,” he said.

Oil prices fell to their lowest level in four months following Trump’s remarks, and analysts cut their price forecasts for the first time since the war began.

Iran’s state media said on Wednesday that a foreign container ship had run aground in shallow waters outside the shipping route designated by ⁠Iranian authorities.

“Hormuz ​continues to reopen but it’s patchy, unpredictable, and not fully transparent,” said Vandana Hari, founder ​of oil market analysis provider Vanda Insights.

Several European countries have offered to help clear mines from the Strait, but Germany’s defense minister Boris Pistorius said he did not expect his country to ​participate, citing Iran’s unwillingness to cooperate with other countries.