Esmail Qaani, the rarely seen commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' Quds Force, has been a visible presence throughout the week's funeral processions for slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, appearing alongside senior Iranian officials in Qom and in Iraq's Shiite holy cities before the late leader's coffin was flown back to Iran on Thursday for burial in his hometown of Mashhad.
Iranian state media showed a Mahan Air flight carrying Khamenei's coffin landing in Mashhad on Thursday, according to the official IRNA news agency, after the body had traveled through the Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala, where millions of mourners took part in processions organized jointly by Iranian and Iraqi authorities. Qaani, who oversees Iran's foreign military and covert operations and has kept an unusually low public profile since the war began in February, was photographed at the ceremonies in Qom on July 6 alongside President Masoud Pezeshkian, and was quoted by Iranian state media praising what he called the spiritual bond between Iran and Iraq as the processions moved through Najaf and Karbala this week.
Khamenei was killed in the joint US Israeli strike that opened the war on February 28, along with several family members, and will be laid to rest at the shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad, the city of his birth and one of the holiest sites in Shia Islam. Iranian authorities have said they expect between eight and ten million people to attend the final burial ceremony. The funeral has stretched across five cities in Iran and Iraq over six days, a scale Iranian officials have framed as a display of national unity and resilience following the war, even as the health of Khamenei's successor and son, Mojtaba, remain uncertain, since he has yet to appear publicly since being named supreme leader.
