Iran's top leaders and three sons of the slain supreme leader reappeared in public on Sunday on the second day of funerals in Tehran, in a sign of confidence in their safety after the war with the United States and Israel. The big absentee was once again Mojtaba Khamenei, the successor, whom Israel threatened to kill and who has not appeared in public after the attack that killed his father.

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The main authorities of Iran and three sons of the late supreme leader Ali Khamenei, murdered in an Israeli-American attack on February 28, attended the funeral prayer for the ayatollah at the Great Mosala Mosque in Tehran this Sunday, July 5. According to the AP agency, the public appearance of the leaders suggests greater confidence in their security.

His presence before the crowd would have been unthinkable during the war, which began on February 28 with airstrikes by the United States and Israel that killed Khamenei, 86, along with members of his family and other senior officials.

During the conflict, Israel attacked officials who appeared in public and, in at least one case, used that appearance to establish its position and bomb them.

At the ceremonies, people gathered in the streets of the capital chanted slogans against the United States and Israel, including calls against the life of US President Donald Trump.

From early in the morning the venue was overflowing, with a larger attendance than on Saturday: the mourners, dressed in black, arrived with flags and banners in homage to Khamenei, leaving no space in the main patio or in the hallways.

Tehran's metro network reported that it recorded seven million trips between Saturday night and Sunday morning due to the flow to the center of the capital, although authorities did not offer official attendance figures.

A prayer was held for Khamenei and the relatives who died with him: his daughter, his son-in-law, his daughter-in-law and a 14-month-old granddaughter, whose coffins were arranged in the large courtyard of the religious complex.

That prayer was led by Ayatollah Jafar Sobhani, 97, one of the country's leading Shiite religious authorities.

Read alsoCrowds gather in Tehran at the start of Ali Khamenei's funeral ceremonies

Mojtaba's absence

State television showed three of Khamenei's sons — Mostafa, Meysam and Masud, who had not been seen since the war — praying behind the coffins.

Masoud was seen crying and wiping his tears with a kufiya, the scarf that in Iran symbolizes revolutionary ideals and solidarity with the Palestinians.

Also attending were President Masaud Pezeshkian; the head of Parliament, Mohamad Baqer Qalibaf; the head of the Revolutionary Guard's Quds Force, Esmail Qaani, and the commander of the Revolutionary Guard, Ahmad Vahidi, who had only been photographed for the first time since the war on Thursday and was seen in the crowd wearing a black cap, flanked by plainclothes security forces. The EFE agency also reported the presence of the head of the Judiciary, Gholam Hossein Mohseni Ejei.

The big absentee was once again Mojtaba Khamenei, the son who succeeded the ayatollah as supreme leader on March 8 and of whom there have been no public sightings or images released since then. According to sources close to his inner circle, cited by Reuters, he would remain in hiding after being injured in the attack that killed his father: his face would have been disfigured and he would have suffered a significant injury to one or both legs.

Read also Between mourning and demonstration of power: Iran bids farewell to Khamenei in a week of funeral ceremonies

Israel threatened to kill him as well, while the new leader leads the Iranian political-religious system that negotiates with the United States a permanent end to the war and the Iranian strangulation of traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, which disrupts global energy supplies.

His eventual first public appearance is one of the great unknowns of these funerals, for which the authorities anticipate a participation of up to 20 million people.

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"Until the last moment, before the prayer began, I told those around me that I hoped he would come himself. It was our only wish," a young woman told the semi-official Tasnim agency.

Another attendee, nurse Ziba Naderi, 42, told the AP that she heard the calls for revenge, but that "the leader must say what we have to do."

Threats against Trump

Calls for revenge dominated the ceremony with posters and graffiti in the Mosala calling for the killing of US President Donald Trump; and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The poet Mohamad Rasouli, who led the event before the prayer, asked the crowd over the loudspeakers, in reference to Trump, why he was still alive, and stated that the world was no longer a good place for him, phrases that were applauded and which constituted the first direct threat against the life of the American president made from the stage during the funeral, according to AP.

"I came here to scream and seek revenge," said Gholamreza Sabooni, a 29-year-old warehouse worker. "They killed our imam, we should kill their leader, Trump."

Another attendee, Mahmud, carried a portrait of the American president framed in the sights of a rifle with the phrase "There will be blood" written in English and Persian.

US federal authorities have been monitoring Iranian threats against Trump and other US officials for years. These threats originated in 2020, when Trump ordered the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani, then head of the Quds Force. Iran, for its part, has repeatedly denied that it is planning to kill Trump.

While the funeral was taking place, Trump gave a speech in Washington for the 250th anniversary of the founding of the United States, in which he stated that the US military had annihilated the Iranian military forces.

Read alsoHow ships put their "security" at risk when transiting the Strait of Hormuz

Negotiations on pause and a week of ceremonies

The war, which lasted four months and left death and destruction in the region, is suspended by a fragile ceasefire reached in an agreement with Washington, which Iranian authorities present as a victory over a superpower.

Talks for a permanent end to the conflict were put on hold until the end of the funerals: Trump told the website Axios that negotiations were suspended for a week because of the funeral events.

According to AP, a high attendance at funerals could be important for Tehran, which seeks to use its control of the Strait of Hormuz as negotiating leverage, while fear of a new Israeli attack persists.

With these mass ceremonies, the Islamic Republic seeks to show national unity and continuity, amid widespread discontent over the country's poor economic situation.

The events began on Friday with an official tribute ceremony attended by the prime ministers of Pakistan and Armenia; the presidents of Iraq, Tajikistan and Georgia, and representatives of Russia, China, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan and Saudi Arabia, among other delegations. Public funerals began on Saturday, which will last until 8:00 p.m. local time (4:30 p.m. GMT) this Sunday.

On Monday, the funeral procession will travel through the streets of Tehran, closed along with the airspace for mourning, and on Tuesday the remains will be transferred to Qom, the center of the Iranian Shiite hierarchy. On Wednesday there will be ceremonies in the Shiite holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, in Iraq, and on Thursday Khamenei will be buried in the mausoleum of Imam Reza, in Mashad, his hometown, in the northeast of the country.

With AP, EFE and Reuters

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