The Government's Staged Funeral Procession, Absence of World Leaders Except for a Few

What he says

An English translation of the talk, which is in Persian. It was made with AI from YouTube's automatic captions and may contain errors; the Persian transcript is authoritative. Click a timestamp to jump to that part of the video.

0:01 Hello. It is Friday, 12 Tir 1405, July 3, 2026. Khamenei's funeral ceremony and the preparations made for it are perhaps the most important news in Iran. The country has been more or less shut down for a week. You could say the holiday started yesterday, and it will continue through Saturday and even next Wednesday, so the country is effectively closed for perhaps ten full days for this ceremony. Tehran has emptied out these days, because when people get such a long holiday,

0:55 they naturally go to their hometowns or to vacation spots to get away from the commotion, although it now appears that large numbers of people are also being brought into Tehran. Khamenei's ceremony, which began today with the so-called attendance of invited foreign countries, is to begin tomorrow at 6 a.m. with the people at the Tehran Mosalla. According to the organizers, 100 *mowkebs* have been set up in Tehran. These are the same groups that take people to the Arbaeen ceremonies in Iraq and elsewhere, the same people who run Hajj caravans, or religious *heyats*, and they are there to serve the people,

1:55 which will include food and water and probably sharbat and other things. According to a published list, tents have been pitched in parks by the Red Crescent and other bodies, new types of tents. Officials say that in a single park, Mellat Park for example, a thousand tents have been set up. In addition, mosques, *hosseiniehs*, the 125 seminaries in Tehran, as well as schools and Education Ministry centers and so on have been opened. For transportation, public transit has been made free, and in Tehran 1,500 free taxi vans are operating on 14 main routes.

2:55 There are 300 water tankers, and the country's transportation resources, such as planes, buses, trains and so on, have been allocated by the government. Quotas have been given to the various provinces, to Basij centers and others, to organize people and bring them to Tehran and try to schedule the routes in turns. In short, it is a mobilization of the country's resources at a cost of billions upon billions of rials, so that they can hold this ceremony on as large a scale as possible. Why? So that afterwards they can say that, for instance, millions of people, 30 million, 40 million, we will see how big a number they

3:56 can manage to announce, came out and are standing behind the regime. It is said they have also prepared at least several film directors, along with cameramen and so on, to make a film out of this later. Ceremonies like this remind one of Hitler, who put that woman filmmaker in charge of making a film of the Olympics. Of course, she did not make the film the way Hitler wanted, and she gave thorough coverage to Black athletes like Jesse Owens and others. In any case, this grand spectacle is really meant to tell

4:52 the people of Iran and the world that the regime is supported by the people, similar to things that have precedent in North Korea and countries of that sort. But it is said that the leaders of more than 15 countries were invited to come to this ceremony, and only a few countries came to Iran at the level of president or prime minister, such as Tajikistan, Iraq and Georgia at the level of president and prime minister; the prime minister of Armenia and the national leader of Turkmenistan went. Pakistan, of course, is a country that sent Asim Munir, the army chief of staff, as well as Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, the interior minister and a dozen of its officials to Tehran. The interesting point

5:51 is that among the countries on the Persian Gulf, Saudi Arabia went to Tehran at the level of deputy foreign minister, and Oman and Qatar sent their parliament speakers, while the UAE, Bahrain and Kuwait sent no one at all. This, of course, shows the tug-of-war on the two sides of the Persian Gulf. We will have to see whether the Riyadh summit that the Saudis are pursuing, after this ceremony and so on, so that they might invite the six Persian Gulf countries together with Iran and, as they put it, achieve reconciliation and strengthen friendship, will succeed

6:48 or not. This funeral in Tehran has, for now, caused three of the six countries not to come at all. But as I said before, the fundamental question facing this ceremony is whether this Mr. Mojtaba will finally appear or will remain behind the curtain of occultation. The claim that for security reasons he must not come and will not appear seems to me somewhat absurd, because there is a ceasefire now, and besides, people are supposed to come and, in the crowd, perform the funeral prayer for Khamenei and for Mojtaba's wife, his sister, his sister's

7:47 husband and others. So if this Mr. Mojtaba does not show up even now, then one really has to say there is something fundamentally wrong: either he is dead and not present at all, or he is in a coma and not conscious at all, or, if he is conscious, his injuries to his head and face, his hands and legs and so on are such that a public appearance is basically impossible. In any case, this is no longer something we need to speculate about. We have to wait these few days and see whether this leader behind the curtain finally appears, or whether his competition with the Hidden Imam of the Shias and presumably Mr. Massoud Rajavi and people of that sort will continue.

8:45 As for Mr. Ghalibaf's speech: state broadcasting (IRIB) cut half of his interview and did not air it, then made the excuse that there had been a technical problem, and then, after the uproar that followed, it showed the whole thing again from the beginning, including the censored part. So it was finally aired. Setting aside the content of Mr. Ghalibaf's remarks, which were an explanation of what they had done, a defense of the memorandum of understanding, and to some extent an attack on the opponents of the memorandum and so on, these divisions within the regime are a subject we also discussed last time, and I think it needs examining.

9:39 Disagreement in the management of the Islamic Republic and factional fragmentation are nothing new. From the very founding of the Islamic Republic, in the first Revolutionary Council itself, whose members were seasoned, weighty people who had worked together for years and had been to prison, disputes began, and they have continued to this day. Because democracy has been absent and they had no choice but to eliminate one another, these fights still exist today. Fundamentally, one of the functions of democracy is conflict resolution, settling disputes between different political tendencies by referring them to the ballot box and the people's decision. Legal mechanisms, through the formation of parties and

10:40 parliaments and referring decisions to the people's vote, are one of the very good functions of democracy, instead of people going at each other's throats, trying to cut off each other's heads, imprisoning each other and so on. Of course, democracy has other important functions too, including resolving the succession crisis. Ever since humanity learned that power could be made periodic, rotated and transferred through the ballot box, the whole father-to-son story and the functions of the monarchical system, one of which was precisely resolving the succession crisis, were set aside. Countries that became democracies and kept their kings mostly kept them powerless, as a symbol and for nostalgia, but power in its real sense

11:39 came to rest with the parliament and the prime minister or the president and so on, and it rotated, with the ballot box as the arbiter. In the Islamic Republic, because this mechanism has been absent, whenever even the slightest difference of opinion, and later, gradually, conflicts of interest and so on, arose, they had no choice but to eliminate one another. The second point is that the Islamic Republic was a system whose power base, at the time of its formation, was the Shia clergy, which itself has always suffered from fragmentation. Based on the simple principle that anyone who becomes a *mojtahed* is forbidden from following another's rulings, the Shia clergy never had the centralism and concentration found, for example, in the Catholic clergy or even among

12:33 the Sunnis. From the very beginning, the followers of different ayatollahs came into conflict, owing to differences of opinion, or differences among the followers themselves, and there was no option left but to eliminate them. Likewise, the other power base of the Islamic Republic was the religious *heyats*, *hosseiniehs*, *takiyehs* and the like, which have also competed and been jealous rivals of one another since olden times, with the crowds attached to each *heyat*, *takiyeh* and guild. These two were the first power bases of the Islamic Republic. But later, mafia gangs of plunder and power were added to them, and they now form the main structure of the Islamic Republic,

13:26 and these gangs sometimes have conflicting interests, and they have in effect been added to this power struggle and power structure. Another point regarding the fragmentation of power in the Islamic Republic and the infighting goes back to Khamenei's style of management. During his 37 years ruling the country, because he interfered in every detail without accepting responsibility for it, he created a structure around himself in which everything went to the Office of the Leader and ultimately to himself, yet it lacks, in the real sense, the order and hierarchy that a structure requires. This can be seen especially in the military and security forces and others as well. So

14:28 when you get to this point and Khamenei has suddenly been removed, running this so-called structure that was built around a single individual is not so simple, especially since the next leader is now absent too. So the problems have burst into the open. And a final point: this division into moderates and hardliners, or slogan-driven and reason-driven, or pragmatists and apocalyptics and so on, has existed from day one up to today, and it has always shown itself in every crisis, such as the hostage-taking, the Iran-Iraq war, the reform movement and so on.

15:23 Today, too, it is showing itself in this latest crisis, that is, war, peace, ceasefire and so on. With this introduction, in the next session we will turn to what state this structure, this Islamic Republic, this so-called framework, has ended up in after the war, and whether, amid these rivalries, it will ever find rest or not. Hoping for the victory of Iran and