The funeral that buried many assumptions
They came in their millions, a river of black chadors and clenched fists that stretched from Tehran to the Iraqi frontier and back again. It was a farewell to rival the passing of Ruhollah Khomeini himself, but this time the slain figure was Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, assassinated during the American-Israeli bombing of Iran, which marked the opening salvo of the conflict earlier this year. The sheer scale of the crowds has shattered the comfortable Western assumption of a hollow and crumbling regime.
After a two-day funeral at Tehran’s Grand Mosalla mosque for the supreme leader and members of his family, mourners poured through the streets of the capital in a procession from Revolution Square to Azadi Square. Iranian state media reported that the turnout reached into the millions, making the funeral one of the largest public gatherings even in the country’s own recent history.
Unpopular it may have been, but as the final farewell proved, nothing galvanises a fractured nation like the fire of an external enemy. Several analysts suggested that Khamenei’s death had produced a rare moment of national cohesion, achieving in death what he had never fully achieved in life – uniting a politically divided country in the face of an external threat.
But beyond the orchestrated spectacle of the funeral, Tehran was sending carefully calibrated messages to its own people and to the outside world. As the cortège carried the ruler who had dominated Iran’s political scene for more than three decades, the Islamic Republic was projecting continuity, resilience and authority despite the war that had claimed its most powerful figure. It was also challenging the narrative repeatedly presented by Washington, particularly by President Donald Trump, that the strikes which killed the supreme leader had changed the regime in Tehran.
Asked whether Tehran was using the funeral to send a political message, Ashok Swain, Professor of Peace and Conflict at Uppsala University said the signal was straightforward. “The state had not collapsed, society had not surrendered, and foreign powers had failed to shatter Iran’s sense of national pride.”
The pretext for war
For decades, Benjamin Netanyahu argued that Iran’s greatest vulnerability was not in its military capabilities but in the growing disconnect between the Islamic Republic and its people. As anti-government protests spread across Iranian cities, particularly after the death of Mahsa Amini in 2022, Israeli officials increasingly suggested that the regime’s legitimacy was eroding from within. Military pressure, they argued, could accelerate a process that had already begun and end the regime. The argument rested on the fact that millions of Iranians had taken to the streets over the years to protest economic hardship, corruption, political repression and the clerical establishment’s tightening grip on public life. Women publicly defied compulsory hijab laws despite the risk of arrest. Students challenged the authorities on university campuses and workers organised strikes despite severe restrictions. Iran’s prisons were filled with journalists, activists and political opponents, while hundreds of demonstrators were killed during successive waves of political unrest.
Those images shaped perceptions abroad and increasingly, they also shaped assumptions in Washington and Tel Aviv that the Islamic Republic had become so estranged from its own citizens that a military confrontation would widen those cracks rather than close them. Netanyahu even spoke directly to Iranians in televised addresses, insisting that Israel’s fight was not with the Iranian people but with the regime that ruled them. The assumption in both Tel Aviv and Washington was that military pressure could create conditions in which the Islamic Republic would struggle to survive. The funeral held last week suggests that assumption deserves closer examination.
Its significance, experts believe, does not lie in proving that the Islamic Republic suddenly became popular or that years of public anger had disappeared. It lies in demonstrating that political opposition and national identity do not necessarily move in the same direction once a country comes under external attack. A society can resent its rulers and still reject the idea of foreign governments deciding its future through military force.
“The funeral showed that the Western pre-war narrative was deeply misleading. Iran has dissent, anger and economic pain, but Trump and Netanyahu confused that with a society ready to welcome foreign bombs and regime change,” said Swain. “The massive turnout demonstrated how invasion and political assassination can turn even critics of a government into defenders of national sovereignty,” the Sweden-based academic explained.
What worked for Tehran
Political scientists have long observed that external conflict often reshapes domestic politics in ways that are difficult to predict. Governments weakened by economic crises, corruption or public discontent frequently discover that war changes the national conversation. Debates over inflation, unemployment or political freedoms give way to questions of sovereignty, territorial integrity and collective survival. Citizens who might otherwise challenge their leaders can find themselves defending the nation instead. That appears to have been one of the unintended consequences of the US-Israeli campaign against Iran. Instead of forcing a decisive rupture between society and the state, the conflict gave the regime in Tehran an opportunity to present itself as the defender of the nation against foreign aggression. The funeral became the clearest public expression of that narrative, not because every person in the crowds endorsed the Islamic Republic, but because many viewed the killing of the country’s supreme leader through the prism of national humiliation rather than domestic politics.
According to experts, the distinction matters because it exposes one of the weaknesses in the logic of regime-change wars. Dissatisfaction with an authoritarian government, they noted, should not automatically be interpreted as support for external intervention. The two are fundamentally different political positions and history offers repeated examples of populations capable of fiercely criticising their own governments while resisting attempts by foreign powers to determine their country’s future.
That tension also raises difficult questions about the language used to justify military intervention. Netanyahu repeatedly argued that the military campaign was directed at the Islamic Republic rather than the Iranian people. In practice, however, wars rarely allow for such neat precision and missiles do not ask whether those caught in their blast radius voted for reformists, supported the opposition, or had spent years resisting the state. Civilians, experts said, inevitably always become part of the war’s human cost.
The dilemma for Iranians
For Iranians who had already suffered decades of political repression, the conflict introduced another burden rather than replacing the first. Many found themselves caught between an authoritarian government at home and foreign military force from abroad, neither of which offered them meaningful agency over their future. That is the paradox confronting advocates of military-led regime change. According to experts, a campaign launched in the name of liberating a population can, at least in the short term, strengthen the very political forces it sought to weaken.
But national unity forged in wartime has often proved temporary, particularly once the immediate threat subsides and the grievances that fuelled public anger re-emerge. Iran’s economic crisis has not disappeared nor have demands for greater political freedoms. All that said, the funeral demonstrated that the relationship between state and society is considerably more complex than the picture presented before the war. It is possible to oppose the Islamic Republic and still refuse to see foreign bombs as the vehicle for political change. And judging by the scenes that unfolded across Tehran, many Iranians made precisely that choice.
Is Iran isolated?
Days before the funeral, another claim made by President Trump was that Iran had become increasingly isolated on the world stage. For years, American officials portrayed the Islamic Republic as a pariah state whose influence was shrinking under the weight of sanctions, economic pressure and regional opposition. But the delegations that arrived in Tehran for Khamenei’s funeral painted a more complicated picture and perhaps even debunked many of those claims.
Representatives from more than 100 countries attended the ceremonies, including states that have often found themselves at odds with Tehran. Particularly notable was the presence of officials from parts of the Gulf, a region where governments have historically viewed the Islamic Republic with suspicion and where ideological differences remain obvious and known. Their attendance did not signal support for Iran’s political system, nor did it erase decades of rivalry, but it did, however, suggest that many countries were unwilling to endorse a campaign that increasingly appeared to be about far more than Iran’s nuclear programme.
Swain argues that Western assessments have often confused opposition to Iranian policies with support for military intervention against Iran itself. “Iran is not isolated in the way Washington claims,” he noted. Many governments, he argued, may disagree with Tehran on a range of issues while simultaneously opposing what they see as attempts by the United States and Israel to reshape the region through military force. The attendance of Gulf and other regional states, according to Swain, demonstrated that countries were increasingly separating their ideological disagreements with Iran from support for what he described as ‘American-Israeli escalation’.
This touches on a broader shift that has been unfolding across the Middle East in recent years. Saudi Arabia and Iran restored diplomatic relations after years of hostility. Gulf states that once framed Iran primarily as a security threat have increasingly prioritised stability, trade and economic development. Even where distrust remains, there is little appetite for a regional conflict that threatens shipping lanes, energy markets and domestic economic agendas. Governments that had spent years criticising Tehran sent representatives to pay their respects. In doing so, they signalled that opposition to Iran’s policies did not automatically translate into support for military action against the Iranian state.
Asked how he viewed the purpose of the war and what it had achieved, Swain rejected the notion that the campaign was principally about security. In his assessment, the objectives extended beyond military concerns. “The purpose of this conflict was not really peace or security; it was domination, humiliation and regime change,” he said.
What emerged instead, he argued, was almost the opposite of what its architects had anticipated. “Rather than weakening national cohesion, the conflict strengthened it. Rather than isolating Tehran, it pushed Iran back to the centre of regional diplomacy. Rather than demonstrating the decisive power of Israel and its allies, it exposed the limits of what military force could accomplish against a large, deeply rooted state.”
Between peace and victory
Speaking at a press briefing after the NATO summit, President Donald Trump declared that the memorandum of understanding from earlier diplomatic efforts was effectively dead, indicating that hopes for peace had died with it. The statement added to a long list of contradictory signals that have characterised Washington’s approach to international negotiations.
Swain sees little consistency in the American president’s position. Trump’s announcement in Ankara, he said, followed a familiar pattern in which agreements are announced, abandoned, revived and reinterpreted according to political circumstances. “This makes any agreement fragile,” Swain argued, because Iran, European governments, Gulf states and even longstanding American allies have become accustomed to the possibility that Washington’s position may change with little warning.
The unpredictability has created its own diplomatic consequences as negotiations depend not only on leverage but also on confidence that commitments made today will still hold tomorrow. Repeated reversals, experts cautioned, make long-term agreements harder to sustain, particularly in a region where mistrust already runs deep.
Despite those uncertainties, Trump has continued to describe the war as a success, but defining victory has become increasingly difficult as the Iranian state remains in place, its institutions continue to function, and its regional relationships, while tested, have not disappeared. The funeral itself became a demonstration of organisational capacity and political mobilisation on a scale that few observers had anticipated.
Swain believes Washington’s claims of victory sit uneasily alongside those realities. Iran, he argued, emerged from the conflict with significant sources of leverage still intact. Geography continues to give Tehran influence over critical trade, energy routes, and its missile capabilities remain part of the regional security equation. “Trump and Netanyahu may have the firepower,” Swain said, “but Iran has popular approval, willingness and endurance.”
The question now is not whether either side can declare victory, but how the conflict ultimately ends. Few analysts believe a decisive military resolution is possible. The balance of power, the geography of the region and the costs of prolonged warfare all point towards the same conclusion that sooner or later, diplomacy will have to return.
Swain argues that negotiations remain the only realistic path forward. A durable settlement, he said, would require far more than battlefield gains or political declarations. It would involve a ceasefire, security guarantees, sanctions relief and a broader regional framework capable of accommodating Iran’s role rather than attempting to eliminate it.