Mojtaba skips father's funeral, deepening questions about Iran's new supreme leader

Iranian officials and sons of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei attend his funeral at the Grand Mosalla Mosque in Tehran on Sunday (local time). [EPA]

Funeral rites for former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei entered their second day in Tehran, but his designated successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, again failed to appear — fueling growing speculation about his health and fitness to lead.

Reuters and the Financial Times reported Sunday that Iranian state television broadcast live footage from the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla of Khamenei's three sons — Mostafa, Meysam and Masoud — praying at the ceremony. The funeral began 126 days after Khamenei was killed in a US-Israeli airstrike on Feb. 28, and he is set to be interred in his hometown of Mashhad on Thursday.

President Masoud Pezeshkian and National Assembly Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf also attended. Masoud, the eldest son, was seen weeping throughout the funeral prayers, wiping his tears with a checkered keffiyeh — a symbol of Palestinian solidarity and revolutionary spirit.

Mourners wave red flags at the funeral of the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla in Tehran on Sunday (local time). [Reuters]

Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, however, was absent once again. He is believed to have been wounded in the same Feb. 28 airstrike that killed his father and other family members, and has not appeared at any public event since. Reuters, citing people close to Mojtaba, previously reported that he suffered severe facial injuries and serious wounds to one or both legs.

CNN noted that had Mojtaba attended and personally led the funeral prayers, it would have marked his first public appearance since the war and a symbolically significant moment for cementing his political legitimacy as supreme leader. His absence, CNN said, would only deepen questions about his health and about who is actually running the country.

Since being named supreme leader, Mojtaba has communicated only through written statements. The Times of London recently reported that he was "unconscious and incapable of governing." An Iranian diplomat who spoke on condition of anonymity told The Washington Post, however, that Mojtaba was likely staying out of public view out of concern over potential assassination attempts by the United States or Israel.

Iranian officials and sons of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei pray before his coffin at his funeral in Tehran on Sunday (local time). [AFP]

Some mourners said they had hoped to see the new supreme leader in person. One woman told the semi-official Tasnim News Agency that she had kept telling those around her, right up until the prayers began, that she hoped Mojtaba would come himself. "That was our only wish," she said.

Tens of thousands of soldiers, seminary students and ordinary citizens gathered at the Mosalla to pay their respects to Khamenei and his family. Five coffins were placed on a platform at the center of the square — those of Khamenei, his 14-month-old granddaughter, his daughter, his son-in-law and his daughter-in-law. Mourners streamed through the night, many in tears or beating their chests in grief. Tehran's subway operator said about 7 million passengers had traveled into the city center from Sunday night through Monday morning.

A man holds a portrait of Iran's new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei at the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla, where the funeral of the assassinated Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was held in Tehran on Sunday (local time). [AP]

mokiya@heraldcorp.com