Mojtaba Khamenei Absent From Father's Funeral; Trump Mocks Mourners
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- Mojtaba Khamenei was absent from his father Ali Khamenei's funeral on Sunday, with his other three sons (Masoud, Mostafa and Meysam) attending alongside President Masoud Pezeshkian and Revolutionary Guards chief Ahmad Vahidi.
- Mojtaba has not appeared in public since his appointment in early March, fueling rumours — not confirmed by Iranian authorities — that he was wounded in the US-Israel air strikes that killed his father.
- Iranian authorities expect 12–20 million people to attend the multi-day ceremonies dubbed the 'funeral of the century,' with Sunday declared a national public holiday and over 4,000 people visiting medical centres at the Grand Mosalla, per state news agency IRNA.
- Donald Trump told Axios peace talks were paused for a week for the funeral, and said the US could wipe out Iran's gathered senior officials with 'one shot' but wouldn't 'because then we would have nobody to negotiate with.'
- Trump said he was surprised to see Iranians crying and suggested the tears might be 'fake,' prompting mourner Zahra Safaei, 50, to tell Reuters: 'We did not make a revolution 47 years ago to shed fake tears.'
- Mourners carried 'kill Trump' and 'kill Bibi' banners in Tehran, and poet Mohammad Rasouli told a recitation that 'Trump's murder is our responsibility,' drawing calls of 'death to America' and 'death to Israel,' per the Associated Press and the Guardian.
- Khamenei's coffin will process through Tehran on Monday, move to Qom on Tuesday, then to a significant Shia site in neighbouring Iraq on Wednesday, with burial Thursday in his north-eastern hometown of Mashhad — all under strict security and warnings of crowd-crush risks.
Why it matters: Mojtaba's absence at a mass choreographed funeral — staged to project regime continuity — raises a direct question about who is actually running Iran, and with Trump's 'one shot' comment and explicit taunting of Iranian grief now on the record, a ceasefire that was already fragile is being publicly stress-tested while both sides claim the right to resume fighting.
