هذا التقرير متاح أيضًا بـ العربية
Nearly four months after the United States assassinated Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, and after Tehran held funeral rites for its leader, Iran intends to hold funeral processions for him in Iraq as well. According to the announced program, the body will be transferred to Iraq, with the procession beginning in the city of Najaf before being moved to Karbala province.
Maj. Gen. Saad Maan, head of the Security Media Cell, revealed during a news conference in Najaf that the funeral route in Najaf province stretches 6 kilometers, while in Karbala it extends 5.8 kilometers.
Although Ali Khamenei is not Iraqi, many observers believe that holding his funeral procession in Najaf and Karbala carries religious and geopolitical messages aimed at both the Iranian public and the outside world, especially given that the United States has not concluded its war against Iran and has not achieved the sweeping objectives President Donald Trump announced at the start of the war in late February.
Many questions have been raised about the significance of holding Khamenei’s funeral procession from Iraq, including what messages Iran is sending to the Iranian public politically and in terms of security, and what messages it is sending to the region and to the United States, and what the significance is of the funeral coinciding with the NATO summit set to be held in Turkey at the same time, and how the funeral procession from Iraq should be read as Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s visit to Washington approaches.
Messages to the home front and abroad
Iranian media reported that Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, President Masoud Pezeshkian and Khamenei’s eldest son will take part in the funeral ceremonies in Iraq, amid doubts and conflicting information over whether Esmail Ghaani, commander of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, will attend the funeral events in Iraq.
Iraqi Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi is set to receive Khamenei’s body at Najaf International Airport this evening, while senior Iraqi figures took part in the leader’s funeral in Iran, including Iraqi President Nizar Amidi and Parliament Speaker Haibat al-Halbousi, among other prominent Iraqi figures, amid confirmations from the office of Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani that he will not lead the funeral prayer for the leader in Najaf because of his health condition.
As for the domestic messages Iran seeks to send by holding Khamenei’s funeral procession from Iraq, says political systems researcher Salim Zakhour, the message is that Tehran is insisting the Iranian political system remains resilient and that the ideological, intellectual and political unity between Iraq and Iran remains intact despite the war.
Security and strategic expert Hassan al-Obaidi says Iran’s regional strategy remains effective. In his view, the delay in Khamenei’s funeral for more than four months was tied to security considerations imposed by the circumstances of the US-Israeli war on Tehran, before Iran moved to capitalize on the month of Muharram, with its special symbolism for Shiites, to boost popular mobilization in Iran and Iraq, where the funeral ceremonies are expected to draw broad participation.
In remarks to NoonPost, al-Obaidi said the most prominent domestic and foreign messages conveyed by Khamenei’s funeral in Iraq are to affirm the continuity of what Tehran calls the “Axis of Resistance,” especially since one of Washington’s goals in its war on Iran was to dismantle this axis.
He added that US pressure on Baghdad is focused on severing economic and political ties with Tehran, while Iran, by holding the supreme leader’s funeral in two Iraqi provinces, is seeking to underscore the continuation of that relationship.
Messages to Washington and the region
Political researcher Mohammed al-Hashimi believes Khamenei’s funeral in Najaf and Karbala carries profound political significance directly tied to what the region has witnessed during the four months since the war on Iran began.
Al-Hashimi says Washington has intensified its pressure on Baghdad to separate it from Tehran and end the strategic link between the two countries. From this perspective, the crowds taking part in Khamenei’s funeral represent a means of displaying the shared ideological, political and popular legacy that Iran is seeking to entrench on the ground, in a message to Washington that the Tehran-Baghdad alliance is resistant to dismantlement or forced isolation, he said.
Although the funeral ceremonies will be limited to Najaf and Karbala, the Iranian plan had also included Baghdad before opposition from al-Zaidi’s government prevented that. According to the Lebanese newspaper Al-Akhbar, preparations for the funeral revealed the scale of the political and diplomatic complexities surrounding the event.
According to the newspaper, the occasion turned into an arena of push and pull reflecting the intensifying struggle for influence between Washington and Tehran inside Iraq. The cancellation of the central funeral in Baghdad was not due only to “time constraints,” as Brig. Gen. Saad Maan, spokesperson for the media committee, announced, but also stemmed from reservations by Ali al-Zaidi’s government from the moment the idea was first proposed.
The newspaper indicates that these reservations were based on security assessments and political calculations, as al-Zaidi is keen to calibrate his steps amid a “diplomatic test” being imposed by Washington ahead of his anticipated visit there in the middle of this month, resulting in a compromise formula that confined the ceremonies to Najaf and Karbala.
In the same context, political researcher Riyadh al-Zubaidi believes Khamenei’s funeral in Iraq also carries security messages, namely that Iran still maintains a popular presence inside Iraq despite mounting US pressure on Baghdad to disarm factions and militias and place all weapons under the control of the Iraqi government, amid the rejection of this course by several factions, foremost among them Kataib Hezbollah and Harakat al-Nujaba.
In remarks to NoonPost, al-Zubaidi added that Iran’s messages do not stop with Washington, but also extend to the Gulf states that were targeted by Iran and its allies in Iraq during the war. He believes the funeral in Iraq sends a message to the Gulf that Iraq remains distant from the Arab and Gulf orientation, especially since countries such as the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait did not take part in Khamenei’s funeral ceremonies in Iran, he said.
Al-Zaidi’s Visit to Washington
Al-Zubaidi also believes that the timing of the funeral ceremonies, coinciding with Iraqi Prime Minister Ali Falih al-Zaidi’s upcoming visit to Washington, carries an additional message to the United States: that its efforts to pull Iraq away from Iran remain far from achievable, and that successive US administrations have failed to accomplish this goal since 2003.
He adds that although al-Zaidi’s government succeeded in preventing the funeral ceremonies from being held in Baghdad — which would have delivered an even stronger geopolitical message for Tehran — limiting them to Najaf and Karbala still gave Iran the minimum political gain it had been seeking, in his words.
Al-Zaidi’s visit to Washington is of particular importance, as it is expected to be a pivotal stop in shaping the future of political, security, and economic relations between Baghdad and Washington, in light of how far the Iraqi government responds to US demands — foremost among them disarming armed factions, reducing economic ties with Iran, and its ability to keep Iraq out of any new confrontation that could erupt between Washington and Tehran if bilateral negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program and the other issues the United States has placed on the negotiating table were to falter.
The Funeral’s Timing With the NATO Summit
For months, the Middle East has been witnessing intense military and political activity, most recently marked by the coincidence of the Iranian supreme leader’s funeral in Iraq with the NATO summit in the Turkish capital, Ankara, in a scene suggesting Tehran’s determination to continue defying the West, above all the United States.
And Western observers believe that the overlap between the funeral and the NATO summit does not appear to be accidental, as Iran is seeking, through the millions who took part in the supreme leader’s funeral in Tehran and then through the anticipated ceremonies in Iraq, to send a strategic message to the West that the regime remains cohesive, capable of mobilizing the home front, and committed to its negotiating position despite the military repercussions of the war with the United States and Israel.
In this context, political researcher Riyadh al-Zubaidi told Noon Post that holding the NATO summit in Turkey, which borders Iran geographically, carries numerous geopolitical messages.
He explained that the summit had been scheduled before Tehran announced the program for its leader’s funeral, making the choice of the funeral’s timing an attempt to assert its presence and send simultaneous messages to the Iranian public, the United States, and the Atlantic alliance that Iran remains a powerful presence in the Middle East, whether through the massive funeral procession at home or through the expected crowds in Iraq.
In this sense, Khamenei’s funeral does not appear to be merely a funeral occasion, but rather a platform for geopolitical messages that Tehran is directing at its adversaries — through the Iranian interior and through Iraq as well, a country whose geography has placed it between pressure from Washington and the weight of Tehran, as it awaits how developments will unfold in the coming months.