As tens of thousands of Iranians flooded Tehran's prayer grounds to pass by the coffins of Ali Khamenei and members of his family, a silent and menacing reminder of the regime's brutality stood watch above their heads.
Footage circulating from the scene shows an extensive deployment of snipers positioned on rooftops overlooking the mourning crowds, part of an unprecedented security operation surrounding the funeral rites, Kikar HaShabbat reported Sunday.
The outlet noted that the scale of the rooftop deployment has drawn comparisons to the bloodshed that shook Iran just months before the outbreak of the war with Israel and the United States. According to the report, it is the same sniper apparatus the regime allegedly relied on this past January to violently suppress protests against the government.
In the weeks preceding the war, hundreds of thousands of Iranians took to the streets in confrontations with security forces. The regime's violent crackdown, which reportedly included the same snipers now stationed on the rooftops, ended in a massacre that left thousands of protesters dead.
Now, according to the report, those same rifles once trained on "rebellious" citizens are ostensibly pointed outward, tasked with securing the funeral procession of the man who led the system that ordered the killings.
The funeral comes at a critical juncture for Iran, as its leaders attempt to project unity and stability after surviving American and Israeli strikes. As senior regime and military officials surrounded the glass encased coffin, the snipers above reportedly ensured that no sign of dissent could surface within the crowd.
The images of the heavy security presence did not go unnoticed on social media. Alongside claims from regime supporters of "millions" of mourners in attendance, other voices mocked the leadership's evident fear of its own population, with some commentators noting that the same security apparatus once protected the regime's boss, "and he is gone anyway."
Even US President Donald Trump weighed in, sarcastically questioning whether the displays of grief were genuine, pointing to the intense hostility many Iranians reportedly held toward Khamenei before the war.
