Tensions rise as hundreds of thousands take to streets of Tehran for funeral of general killed in drone strike

Revolutionary songs of 40 years ago rang out on Tehran’s streets on Monday as hundreds of thousands of Iranians gathered to mourn the country’s top general, Qassem Suleimani, who was killed in a US drone strike last week.

Huge crowds of mourners clad in black slowly passed Suleimani’s flag-draped coffin over their heads, and roads across the city were blocked by heavy traffic as the procession made its way toward Azadi Square.

Play Video 0:54 Qassem Suleimani's daughter warns US of 'dark days' ahead - video

Ayatollah Ali Khameni’s voice cracked with emotion and the country’s supreme leader wept openly as he recited prayers over the caskets of Suleimani and others killed in the attack in Baghdad on Friday, which has heightened tensions between Tehran and Washington dramatically.

The mood on the streets swung between mourning, anger and a desire for retribution. Among the procession, a four-year-old girl led chants of “death to America” and mourners shouted “neither mediation nor surrender” while groups of uniformed security officers and secret service agents weaved their way through the crowds.

Profile Who was Qassem Suleimani? Show Hide Qassem Suleimani, killed by a US drone strike in Baghdad, had become well known among Iranians and was sometimes discussed as a future president. Many considered Suleimani to have been the second most powerful person in Iran, behind supreme leader of Iran Ali Khamenei, but arguably ahead of President Hassan Rouhani. He was commander of the Quds Force, the elite, external wing of the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which the Trump administration designated as a terror organisation in April last year. He was born in Rabor, a city in eastern Iran, and forced to travel to a neighbouring city at age 13 and work to pay his father’s debts to the government of the Shah. By the time the monarch fell in 1979, Suleimani was committed to the clerical rule of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, and joined the Revolutionary Guards, the paramilitary force established to prevent a coup against the newly declared Islamic Republic. Within two years, he was sent to the front to fight in the war against the invading Iraqi army. He quickly distinguished himself, especially for daring reconnaissance missions behind Iraqi lines, and the war also gave him his first contact with foreign militias of the kind he would wield to devastating effect in the decades to come. By the the time the Iraq government fell in 2003, Suleimani was the head of the Quds force and blamed for sponsoring the Shia militias who killed thousands of civilian Iraqis and coalition troops. As fighting raged on Iraq’s streets, Suleimani fought a shadow war with the US for leverage over the new Iraqi leadership. Once described by American commander David Petraeus as ‘a truly evil figure’, Suleimani was instrumental in crushing street protests in Iran in 2009. In recent months outbreaks of popular dissent in Lebanon, Iraq and Iran were again putting pressure on the crescent of influence he had spent the past two decades building. Violent crackdowns on the protests in Baghdad were blamed on militias under his influence.

Eighteen months before his death, Suleimani had issued Donald Trump a public warning, wagging his finger and dressed in olive fatigues. “You will start the war but we will end it.” Michael Safi Photograph: Mehdi Ghasemi/AFP

Signs posted around the area showed the faces of Suleimani and Khamenei with the words “harsh revenge awaits”, and slogans including “Iraqis and Iranians are friends and nobody can separate them”.

The phrase “God willing we’ll receive the news that Tel Aviv has been turned into dust very soon” blared from loudspeakers.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and President Hassan Rouhani pray near the coffins of Qassem Soleimani. Photograph: Official President’S Website/Reuters

A petition asking for names and phone numbers of people in the crowd read: “I am ready for jihad at any moment and awaiting my leaders’ orders.”

The huge processions to mourn the former leader of the Revolutionary Guards’ elite Quds force mark the first time Iran has honoured an individual with ceremonies in various cities. Suleimani’s body was flown back to Iran on Sunday, when mourners gathered in Ahvaz and Mashhad. After Tehran his coffin will be taken to the holy city of Qom before being buried in his hometown of Kerman on Tuesday.

“Have you EVER seen such a sea of humanity in your life?” Iran’s foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, asked Donald Trump in a tweet. “Do you still want to listen to the clowns advising you on our region? And do you still imagine you can break the will of this great nation?”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Iranian revolutionary guards surround the coffins of Qassem Suleimani and others killed in Friday’s US strike as mourners gathered for their funeral in Tehran on Monday. Photograph: Abedin Taherkenareh/EPA

State media said millions of people had poured onto the streets of the capital. The crowds shown on television appeared to be the biggest since the 1989 funeral of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic.

Suleimani, who was widely considered one of the most important figures in the Middle East and second only to Khamenei inside Iran, was a decorated veteran of Iran’s eight-year war with Iraq and later the prime architect of Iranian influence abroad. He is seen by many as a national hero who saved the region from Islamic State.

Ismail Haniyeh, the leader of the Hamas authorities in Gaza, made a surprise visit to Tehran for the ceremony, where he described Suleimani in his address as the “martyr of Jerusalem”.

“Many countries owe their existence to [Suleimani]. Syria, Iraq and Yemen would collapse without him,” one elderly man in the crowd said.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The flags of Israel and the United States are set alight during the funeral procession.



Photograph: Atta Kenare/AFP/Getty Images

“We’re all followers and will follow his way. His mission will be accomplished someday with the liberation of Palestine,” a woman said.

“For some Iranians, Suleimani was a war hero … But that doesn’t explain why millions of Iranians are in the streets for his funeral,” said Holly Dagres, an Iran specialist at the Atlantic Council.

“Since assassinating the Quds force commander, Trump has threatened to strike 52 sites in Iran, including cultural sites. Trump is no longer threatening the Islamic Republic and its leadership. He’s threatening the land of Iran and its 2,500-year-old culture and history. This has unified the Iranian people and is why the numbers are so big at the funeral.”

Trump has said the US military had drawn up a list of 52 targets, mirroring the number of US embassy hostages held for 444 days after the Iranian revolution, that would be hit if Americans or US assets were attacked in revenge over Suleimani’s killing.

His comments have drawn criticism both at home and abroad and alarm in Iran, where thousands of people have posted pictures of cultural sites on social media in protest.

Such action by the US could be considered a war crime under international law, but Trump has since reiterated his initial comments. “They’re allowed to kill our people. They’re allowed to torture and maim our people. They’re allowed to use roadside bombs and blow up our people. And we’re not allowed to touch their cultural sites? It doesn’t work that way,” Trump told reporters onboard Air Force One on the way to Washington from Florida on Sunday.

At Suleimani’s funeral, speakers repeatedly told the crowds that the commander’s death would not go unavenged. In a fiery address, Zeinab Suleimani, his daughter, said: “America and Zionism should know that my father’s martyrdom will lead to … a dark day for them and flatten their homes. Crazy Trump, don’t think that everything is over with my father’s martyrdom.”



