Resistance and revenge – Iran wanted to send a message with its farewell to Khamenei
The gray-haired man named Mojtaba, who came to us saying he had a message, said, “I want to say one sentence to President Trump and the world.”
“Very soon you will see signs of revenge atop the White House, and soon the color of the White House will be the color of my red flag.”
“Some of these searches are just for ritual purposes,” a government official told me. “But the anger is real among hard-line critics within the system who oppose the new deal with the United States that killed our leader.”
After surviving weeks of war, Iran’s new leaders must now resume negotiations to address a dire financial situation if they want to see much-needed relief through sanctions relief and asset freezes.
Government supporters in welcoming crowds approached strangers, including what the government said were 400 social media influencers, asking “where are you from?” he continued to ask. They frequently encouraged visiting media to “tell the truth.”
But there were other voices in this crowd. Two young Iranian women, wearing the black cloaks of most of the mourning women, took us aside and whispered that the “real voices of the revolution” had been heard only months earlier in protests on the same streets.
The road ahead remains uncertain as Iran has buried the last of the first generation of founders of the 1979 revolution.
Nearly forty years ago, I was in Iran when it buried its first religious leader, Ayatollah Khomeini. In the mad stampede, his flimsy wooden coffin broke and his white-shrouded body tumbled into the crowd.
Iran is entering a new era with its third Supreme Leader, 56-year-old Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not been seen since he was seriously injured in the air strikes that resulted in the death of his father.
His absence was made even more apparent when his three brothers were seen at the open-air Grand Musalla mosque compound where their father lies.
Iranian officials point out that Israel’s threats to assassinate him continue.
“He’s in my heart and I hope he’s safe from Trump and Netanyahu,” insisted one woman traveling with her family from Hamadan, a four-hour drive away, to join the parade.
But the organizers of what they called “the event of the century” tried to maximize other symbols.
The largest of these is the huge statue of clenched fists that now towers over Enqelab, or Revolution Square; The “defiance punch” was intended to send a message to enemies outside and inside Iran that the Islamic Republic could not be defeated.
The BBC’s chief international correspondent, Lyse Doucet, reports from Tehran on the condition that no material of hers be used on the BBC’s Persian service. These restrictions apply to all international media organizations operating in Iran.
