PREVIEW

Mourners carry the coffin of Iran's late supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as they take part in the funeral procession at the Imam Hussein Shrine in Karbala early on July 9, 2026. Iranians were preparing on July 9 to bury their slain leader Ali Khamenei in his hometown of Mashhad in northeast Iran, as new US strikes threatened to trigger a fresh escalation in the Middle East war. The late leader's burial follows a multi-day funeral ceremony that attracted millions of mourners across various cities in both Iran and Iraq.