Iran Mourners Stone Trump Billboard at Khamenei Funeral
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- Iranian mourners marched through central Tehran on Monday in a funeral procession for Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, with state TV drone footage showing tens of thousands packed into a boulevard as fire hoses sprayed the crowd to keep them cool.
- Mourners hurled stones at a billboard depicting President Trump with a bullet aimed at his head that read "The U.S. killed our father. We won't let you go!" and waved red banners calling out to the "avengers of Khamenei."
- Mojtaba Khamenei has succeeded his father as supreme leader but has not appeared publicly since being wounded in the Feb. 28 strikes that killed the elder Khamenei, while three other sons of the slain leader prayed beside his coffin on Sunday.
- The funeral procession will continue to the Shi'ite seminary city of Qom and two Shi'ite shrine cities in neighboring Iraq this week before burial in a medieval shrine complex in Mashhad.
- Israel's defence minister Israel Katz said on Monday the elder Khamenei was killed because he led a program to destroy Israel, adding: "Any Iranian leader who will again try to pursue plans to destroy Israel will be killed as well."
- Trump said over the weekend that peace talks with Iran had been delayed by a week because of the funeral ceremonies, as a preliminary peace agreement reached last month left Iran's clerical leadership in power with new control over global energy supplies via the Strait of Hormuz.
Why it matters: The funeral spectacle doubles as Tehran's first major display of public grief and defiance since the Feb. 28 strikes, and the explicit billboard targeting Trump signals the clerical leadership is leveraging the mourning to bolster domestic legitimacy under Mojtaba Khamenei, who has yet to appear publicly since being wounded.
