A sea of mourners filled the streets of Tehran on Monday for the funeral procession of late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. FRANCE 24 spoke to some of those who had travelled across the country to pay their respects for the man who led the Islamic Republic for almost four decades until he was killed in US-Israeli air strikes.
Hundreds of thousands of mourners gathered along Tehran's Revolution Avenue on Monday for the third and final day of the funeral ceremony for late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Khamenei, who led the Islamic Republic of Iran for 37 years, was killed by US-Israeli air strikes alongside several members of his family at his Tehran residence in late February, launching a war that killed thousands of people across the region.
Samira Afshari, a 34-year-old neurologist who travelled from Isfahan to attend the ceremony, said that her admiration for the supreme leader had started early in life.
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"His resilience, his words, his character – the older I got, the more I learned, and the more I loved him," she said.
Standing among the crowd, FRANCE 24 correspondent Reza Sayah said the mass mobilisation was in part intended by the government as a show of strength despite five weeks of devastating US-Israeli bombardment.
"Critics and opponents of the late supreme leader long claimed that he didn't have widespread support – that there were more opponents than supporters," he said. "His supporters point to this crowd, to this gathering, to say that those critics were wrong, and that they underestimated the strength and the resilience of the Islamic Republic, they underestimated the support for the supreme leader."
