Ayatollah Khamenei and the Death That Changed the World

The morning sun had not yet appeared over the city of Tehran on Friday (5/6/2026) when I and a number of invited guests from Indonesia disembarked from the plane. Still weary from the long journey, we were suddenly informed that we had been given the opportunity to pay our final respects to the body of the martyr Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and his family at the Grand Mosalla of Tehran. The series of final tributes in the main hall, approaching the five coffins, was actually intended for official state delegates. The official ceremony was to be held a few hours later. There was a hint of relief in my heart that although the government had not sent a special envoy who should have been present in that room, at least we—ordinary citizens—could serve as ‘representatives’ of Indonesia. In the courtyard of the Mosalla, masses of people from various parts of Iran had begun to arrive. As the day progressed, more and more came. Iranian media reported that the number of citizens who came to the Tehran Mosalla from Friday to Sunday reached millions. They came in an orderly fashion, allowed to stay inside the Mosalla for only fifteen minutes before leaving to give others a chance. From Tehran, the bodies of the five martyrs were to be taken and prayed over in the city of Qom, then Najaf and Karbala in Iraq, before returning to Iran to be buried in the city of Mashhad. The total number of people participating in the six-day funeral procession was estimated to potentially reach 30 million, a figure conveyed by Iranian officials cited by the media.