{"id":346411,"date":"2026-07-07T08:28:29","date_gmt":"2026-07-07T07:28:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/?p=346411"},"modified":"2026-07-07T08:28:29","modified_gmt":"2026-07-07T07:28:29","slug":"khameneis-funeral-cannot-rewrite-his-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ncr-iran.org\/en\/news\/iran-a-world\/khameneis-funeral-cannot-rewrite-his-legacy\/","title":{"rendered":"Khamenei’s Funeral Cannot Rewrite His Legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"
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High-ranking Iranian officials stand in a line during the state-staged funeral ceremony for Ali Khamenei\u2014 July 5, 2026<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Four-minute read<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

As the Iranian regime stages the delayed funeral of Ali Khamenei after thirty-seven years in power, it seeks to transform a burial into a theater of legitimacy. The preparations have followed the choreography of a major state event: security roadblocks, organized transportation, public announcements, arranged ceremonial spaces, and restricted access for journalists<\/a>, whose movements were tightly controlled by official escorts, translators, and state-mandated guides. Along Vali-Asr Avenue, roads gave way to reception and mourning stations distributing food and water. The funeral, set to continue in Tehran, other Iranian cities, and even into neighboring Iraq, aims to do far more than bury a leader. It seeks to manufacture the image of national veneration. But no ceremony can erase the repression, executions, censorship, misogynistic control, persecution of minorities, and regional violence that marked his reign.<\/p>\n

Khamenei\u2019s responsibility was not merely symbolic. Under the Iranian Constitution, the Supreme Leader dictates state policy, commands the armed forces, declares war and peace, and appoints the heads of the judiciary, state broadcasting, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), and other high-ranking security apparatuses. In practice, he held ultimate authority over the institutions tasked with domestic repression: the IRGC, the Basij, the intelligence apparatus, the judiciary, and state propaganda<\/a>. The crimes committed under his rule were not isolated excesses. They formed a recurring pattern in which major protest movements were treated as existential threats.<\/p>\n

This pattern was evident in the suppression of the 1999 student protests, the 2009 Green Movement, the 2017\u20132018 protests, and, most notably, the November 2019 uprising. During the demonstrations triggered by a fuel price hike in 2019, security forces opened fire on protesters nationwide. Reuters, citing official Iranian sources, reported approximately<\/a> 1,500 deaths; Amnesty International documented at least 304 fatalities and thousands of arrests. According to reports by Reuters, Khamenei ordered that the protests be stopped by any means necessary. The message was unequivocal: faced with dissent, the regime chose a bloodbath over reform.<\/p>\n

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"The Shah learned too late that a throne built on spectacle collapses when the audience stops clapping. The men who replaced him, now staging their own pageant over #Khamenei<\/a>\u2019s coffin, have learned nothing at all. The Iranian people, however, have learned everything," @khansari_m<\/a>\u2026<\/p>\n

— NCRI-FAC (@iran_policy) July 3, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n