Iran Uses Khamenei's Legacy To Burnish Support Abroad --- Iraq, which is trying to rein in militias supported by Tehran, is key to that effort

“Iran has designed its weeklong funeral for slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei not only as a show of defiance against the West, but to boost the late ayatollah's religious stature among the more than 200 million Shia Muslims worldwide.

 

That effort is especially evident in Iraq, where crowds of mourners flooded the streets of the holy city of Najaf on Wednesday to mourn Khamenei, whose body had been flown in ahead of burial in Iran on Thursday. Iran is hoping to rally supporters in the country most key to its national interests and to position the ayatollah in a sacred lineage going back to the roots of Shia Islam.

 

Khamenei's death in an airstrike early in the war coincided with growing pressure on the Iraqi government to shake off Iran's influence. Tehran has long loomed large there, supporting a Shia resurgence following the fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003. But now the government in Baghdad is pushing back, ordering pro-Iran militias to disarm and integrate into state forces by the end of September.

 

Tehran is hoping to push those differences aside and use Khamenei's death, during what many in the region see as an unjustified act of war, to amplify his religious stature instead. Shia Islam, particularly as it is espoused by the Islamic Republic of Iran, is centered on martyrdom rooted in the death in 680 of Imam Hussein ibn Ali, grandson of the Prophet Muhammad and according to Shias his rightful heir.

 

Khamenei's funeral is orchestrated to echo that foundational story. Hussein was beheaded in the Battle of Karbala alongside a small group of followers and family members, including children, after resisting the authority of the Muslim caliph. Similarly, Khamenei was killed by an enemy airstrike along with several members of his family, including a 1-year-old granddaughter.

 

"The circumstances of his death map almost too neatly onto the Karbala paradigm the Islamic Republic has built its entire political theology on," said Narges Bajoghli, associate professor at Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies and author of a book about the Iranian regime's identity. "It handed them a ready-made sacred story."

 

On Wednesday, Khamenei's coffin was to be carried through the streets of Karbala, where the fateful 7th-century battle took place. The procession coincided with the annual commemoration of Imam Hussein, the mourning month of Muharram, the holiest period of the year in Shia Islam.

 

When Khamenei was appointed supreme leader in 1989 following the death of the Islamic Republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, he was seen as lacking sufficient religious credentials for the role.

 

He weeded out clerical competition and consolidated his rule over a nation of 90 million people as it grew into a regional military and political powerhouse.

 

His legacy is complicated by his dual political and religious roles. In his nearly four decades as Iran's top decision maker, Khamenei oversaw brutal oppression of political dissidents and the enforcement of strict religious codes, making enemies of millions of Iranians who his Islamic Republic claimed to protect and represent.

 

Overseas, he supported militias that brought war to Lebanon, killed thousands of Syrians during that country's civil war and set off three years of conflict with the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel.

 

Not all Shias saw Khamenei as their principal religious guide, but he became widely respected as a clerical authority and for standing up for a sect that has historically felt persecuted. He wore a black turban, signifying direct descendance from the Prophet Muhammad. He lost the use of his right hand after a bombing in 1981, burnishing his credentials as a Shia revolutionary who has known sacrifice.

 

Even followers of other prominent Shia clerics, such as Iraq's own Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, were outraged by Khamenei's killing. Iran will likely leverage that sympathy over the coming months to try to deepen its influence in Iraq through stronger ties with tribal leaders, clerics and political figures, said Sajad Jiyad, an Iraqi political analyst in Baghdad and a fellow with the Century Foundation, a progressive U.S.-based think tank.” [1]

 

1. World News: Iran Uses Khamenei's Legacy To Burnish Support Abroad --- Iraq, which is trying to rein in militias supported by Tehran, is key to that effort. Sune Engel Rasmussen.  Wall Street Journal, Eastern edition; New York, N.Y.. 09 July 2026: A6.