Trump says Iran has agreed to \u2018just about everything we need\u2019 in talks
\n Tehran: The body of Iran\u2019s slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was lying in state in a vast hall in Tehran on Friday as clerics, officials, foreign dignitaries and other mourners paid their respects after his 37-year rule.
\nIran is staging a week of mass funeral processions for Khamenei \u2014 killed in February by United States and Israeli airstrikes at the start of a four-month war \u2014 in a show of public devotion to the Islamic Republic\u2019s theocratic state and revolutionary fire.
\nKhamenei\u2019s body was expected to be taken to Qom, Najaf and Kerbala, the great Shi\u2019ite centres of Iran and Iraq, before being laid to rest on Thursday in Mashhad, home to the country\u2019s holiest pilgrim shrine.
\nCritical moment for Islamic Republic
\nHis coffin was unveiled late on Thursday to a throng of sobbing supporters, swaying and beating their heads in time to a sung lament as flowers were thrown from the bier into the crowd. On Friday the coffin \u2014 and those of family members killed with him \u2014 was laid in state in the great prayer hall built to honour his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
\nThe funeral comes at a critical moment for Iran, where the clerical rulers backed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are riding high from surviving what they saw as an existential war against their greatest and most powerful foes.
\nBut nearly five decades after the 1979 revolution, and for all the official proclamations of national unity in the run-up to Khamenei\u2019s funeral, the Islamic Republic has rarely been so internally fractured.
\nSupport for the clerical leadership is paper thin, analysts say, and the new Supreme Leader, Khamenei\u2019s son Mojtaba Khamenei, has not been seen in public since being wounded in the strike that killed his father.
\nYears of crippling sanctions have paralysed the economy as accelerating bouts of mass nationwide protests have been put down by security forces with increasing force \u2014 culminating in the killing of thousands of demonstrators in January. Those deep problems have been brushed aside this week, with the authorities mounting a display of state power and mass support, mobilising what they hope will be millions of mourners to take part in the funeral.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Trump says Iran has agreed to \u2018just about everything we need\u2019 in talks Tehran: The body of Iran\u2019s slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was lying in state in a vast hall in Tehran on Friday as clerics, officials, foreign dignitaries and other mourners paid their respects after his 37-year rule. Iran is staging a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":554297,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-554284","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-top-news"],"yoast_head":"\n