Thousands of mourners lined the streets of downtown Tehran on Saturday for the funeral of the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and other top commanders and nuclear scientists killed during a 12-day war with Israel.
“The ceremony to honor the martyrs has officially started,” state TV said, showing footage of people donning black clothes, waving Iranian flags, and holding pictures of the slain military commanders.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian as well as other senior government officials attended the event.
Images showed coffins draped in Iranian flags and bearing portraits of the deceased commanders in uniform near Enghelab Square in central Tehran.
The caskets of Guards chief Gen. Hossein Salami, the head of the Guard’s ballistic missile program, Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, and others were driven on trucks along the capital’s Azadi Street as people in the crowds chanted, “Death to America” and “Death to Israel.”
The flags of both countries were burned.
Salami and Hajizadeh were both killed on the first day of the war, June 13, as Israel launched a sweeping assault on Iran’s top military leaders, nuclear scientists, uranium enrichment sites, and ballistic missile program, which it said was necessary to prevent the Islamic Republic from realizing its avowed plan to destroy the Jewish state.
Also among the dead is Mohammad Bagheri, a major general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and the second-in-command of the armed forces after the Iranian leader. He will be buried alongside his wife and daughter, a journalist for a local media outlet.
Nuclear scientist Mohammad Mehdi Tehranchi, also killed in the attacks, will be buried with his wife
Video on social media appeared to show the commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ elite Quds Force, Gen. Esmail Qaani, at the funeral. The New York Times reported early in the war, without citing sources, that Qaani was among the Iranian military leaders killed in Israeli strikes, although the IDF had not claimed to have targeted him.
There was no immediate sign of Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the state broadcast of the funeral. Khamenei, who has not made a public in-person appearance since before the outbreak of the war, has held prayers for fallen commanders over their caskets before the open ceremonies at previous funerals, later aired on state television.
Khamenei’s last public appearance was June 11, two days before hostilities with Israel broke out, when he met with Iranian parliamentarians.
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