Former Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has unexpectedly re-emerged at the state funeral of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, ending months of intense speculation over his whereabouts and instantly becoming one of the ceremony's most talked-about figures.
For many watching inside Iran and abroad, the biggest surprise was not the vast crowds filling the streets of Tehran; it was seeing Ahmadinejad walking among them. After disappearing from public view during the four-month conflict between Iran, the United States and Israel, the former president had become the subject of persistent rumours, with various reports and social media posts claiming he had been killed, wounded or placed under strict security restrictions. None of those claims were independently confirmed, but his prolonged absence fuelled widespread speculation.
