Journalist and Iran analyst
As Ali Khamenei’s coffin is carried through days of state-orchestrated mourning, the Islamic Republic is trying to recast a humiliating wartime death as martyrdom, continuity and power, and repair a system wounded by war and public distrust.
The funeral is not simply the burial of a dead ruler. It is an attempt to rebuild the image of a damaged power structure.
The Islamic Republic lost its leader in the first blow of the war, at the heart of its own power network and alongside members of his family.
Now it is trying to use a coffin, flags, religious elegies, organized crowds and the language of sacrifice to change the meaning of that defeat.
Whether Khamenei’s actual body is inside the coffin may matter less than what the coffin is being made to carry.
That uncertainty is itself part of the Islamic Republic’s new condition: a system that hides the truth, manages death and turns opacity into political ritual.
The coffin is therefore more than a funeral object. It is a message. The system wants to show that it can still stage power, mobilize crowds and manufacture a national narrative.
A coffin in place of authority
In life, Khamenei was the final symbol of unaccountable power in the Islamic Republic.
For decades, he oversaw repression, executions, the elimination of opponents, control over women’s bodies, engineered elections and security violence. But the way he died broke the image of invulnerability built around him.
A leader who presented himself as commander of the “resistance” and the center of regional power was not killed on a battlefield. He was targeted in a moment that exposed the vulnerability of the structure he ruled.
That is why the Islamic Republic has to rewrite the scene of his death.
The funeral is meant to replace the image of defeat with another image: a slain leader, a grieving religious community, a foreign enemy and a system that still stands after being struck.
As so often in the Islamic Republic, religious ritual becomes a tool of political survival.
In the Islamic Republic’s political culture, death is rarely allowed to remain death. If it can serve power, it is turned into martyrdom.
The state is now trying to reconstruct Khamenei not as the repressive ruler of the past four decades, but as a sacred and wronged figure killed by an external enemy.
But the problem for the Islamic Republic is that society’s memory has not been erased.
For millions of Iranians, Khamenei’s name is tied to the January 2026 killings, the suppression of the Woman, Life, Freedom movement, the bloody crackdown of November 2019, the execution of protesters, mass poverty, forced migration, structural corruption and the reduction of ordinary life to survival.
The government wants the sound of elegies and the image of crowds to cover that memory. But official mourning is not the same as social grief.
A crowd gathered through buses, public holidays, state resources, administrative pressure, round-the-clock propaganda and networks linked to the Basij and other government bodies is not proof of public love.
It is proof of the state’s capacity, and insistence, on organizing the street.
The Islamic Republic wants to turn bodies present in public space into evidence of loyalty, even if many of those bodies are there because of fear, coercion, benefit, habit or indifference.
A ritual for political survival
The timing of the ceremonies during the holy Shiite month of Muharram gives the state a powerful symbolic opportunity.
Since its birth, the Islamic Republic has narrated politics through the language of Ashura: oppression, blood, enemies, sacrifice and martyrdom.
It is now trying to place Khamenei’s death inside the same structure of meaning.
In that narrative, a ruler responsible for many deaths is recast as a victim whose blood must be avenged. This reversal is the core of the propaganda.
The real victims are removed from the scene, while the agent of repression is placed in the position of the wronged.
The mothers of those killed, political prisoners, suppressed women and the families of executed protesters are absent from this stage.
The scene is designed for only one authorized form of mourning: grief for humiliated power.
But the state’s urgent need for religious spectacle also exposes weakness. If political authority were enough, why would the system need so much ritual, spending, closure, security and propaganda to prove that it continues?
The answer is that after Khamenei’s death, the fracture in the image of power has become visible.
His funeral is the first major test of the Islamic Republic after Khamenei.
The system wants to show that his death has not produced collapse, paralysis or a vacuum, and that it can still occupy the street.
The ceremonies are a postwar maneuver by a state that has suffered a military blow, lost much of its social legitimacy and faces a deeply distrustful society.
That is why Khamenei’s funeral is not the end of an era. It is an attempt to control the narrative of how that era ended.
The Islamic Republic knows that the way Khamenei died symbolizes weakness. It is trying to make the way he is buried symbolize power.
But the project contains a central contradiction. A system trying to build authority from Khamenei’s coffin is admitting, without saying so, that authority alone is no longer enough.
If real legitimacy existed, such a vast display would not be necessary. If society were truly grieving, this level of organization would not be needed.
If Khamenei were genuinely loved, the state would not have to rewrite his death with such a volume of propaganda, ritual and security control.
Tehran’s unveiling of a towering statue depicting the Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling before pre-Islamic Persian King Shapur I has renewed criticism of the Islamic Republic’s appeal to nationalist sentiment following the June war with Israel.
For over forty years, the theocracy purged ancient Persian history from schoolbooks, replacing it with post-Islamic narratives. But after the 12-day conflict with Israel, officials have turned to the distant pre-Islamic past to rally a divided society.
From murals of ancient kings and soldiers to patriotic songs added to Shi’ite mourning ceremonies performed before Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Tehran now embraces imagery once deemed heretical by its own revolutionary ethos.
'Kneel before Iran' campaign
Tehran’s Revolution (Enghelab) Square was the scene of an unusual spectacle on Friday as officials unveiled a massive bronze statue depicting Roman Emperor Valerian kneeling in submission before Sassanid King Shapur I, commemorating Iran’s victory at the Battle of Edessa (260 AD).
The event was held under the slogan “Kneel before Iran,” part of what authorities describe as a campaign to project “national unity and historical pride” following the June war with Israel.
Tehran Mayor Alireza Zakani, a staunch ultraconservative, said on X: “Enmity with Great Iran can only end in kneeling before this historic nation.”
Municipal official Davood Goodarzi said the installation would be accompanied by visual displays depicting “other victories of Iranians over foreign aggressors,” including the defeat of British forces by local commander Rais-Ali Delvari, Mirza Kuchak Khan’s resistance against Russian troops, and Surena’s triumph over Rome at the Battle of Carrhae in 53 BCE.
The goal, Goodarzi said, is “strengthening concepts such as national dignity, social unity, and Iranian identity.”
The statue, he said, would remain temporarily at Revolution Square before being moved to a city gateway “where it will stand as the first emblem of Iran before diplomats and foreign visitors.”
Unveiled women were allowed to attend the unveiling ceremony—an uncommon scene at events organized by Tehran’s ultra-hardline municipality.
The turn to the pre-Islamic past
The sharp reversal also recalls remarks once made by Khamenei. In a 2011 speech, he asserted that “all the great military victories of this nation came after Islam,” dismissing pre-Islamic accounts as “things that are not documented.”
In 1987, he had said that prophets triumphed over kings such as Cyrus and that “nothing remains of these monarchs in history but names remembered with derision.”
Nevertheless, pro-government social media accounts have now gone so far as to circulate posters equating Khamenei himself with Shapur, showing him standing with a staff as Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump kneel before him. The caption reads: “You will kneel before Iran.”
'Hypocrisy'
Pro-government figures have hailed the move as a patriotic success. Conservative political reporter Hossein Saremi posted: “Today’s grand Iranian gathering showed that people and the state share one essence: Iran itself. Nothing can take our homeland away.”
Others, however, called the spectacle “hypocrisy.” Journalist Gholamhossein Pashaei wrote on X: “Every year you close Pasargadae to stop people from celebrating Cyrus Day, yet you unveil Shapur’s statue in Enghelab Square with drums and fireworks during Fatimiyya (mourning period)!”
Dissident commentator Hamid Asafi called the ceremony “a perfect snapshot of the Islamic Republic’s contradictions.”
On Telegram he wrote: “A week ago they closed Cyrus’s tomb out of fear of the crowds, and now they glorify Shapur in the same breath. The Islamic Republic fears living history but poses for selfies with its corpse.”
He added: “They know people no longer respond to rosaries and sermons. That’s why they’ve brought history back to the stage—in a controlled costume. If they can’t erase the past, they’ll try to own it.”
The irony deepened as UNESCO formally recognized Cyrus’s Charter as one of the earliest human-rights documents.
President Masoud Pezeshkian wrote on X: “Iran, the cradle of dialogue, justice, and coexistence, can still inspire peace today.”
Users swiftly replied, questioning how such pride could coexist with a government that blocks access to Cyrus’s tomb each year to those wishing to visit it on his birthday.
