Thousands of mourners thronged the streets of Iran’s capital, Tehran, on Saturday at a funeral procession for about 60 people killed in the war with Israel, including some of the country’s top military commanders and nuclear scientists.
Live coverage by Iranian state television showed streets that were barren during the 12-day war now packed for the state funeral. Participants waved green, red and white Iranian flags, red banners with religious slogans or branches of white flowers.
The often-heard public chants in the Islamic Republic, “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” rang out as trucks with caskets in the back inched along the route between two of Tehran’s main squares. From there, the caskets were expected to be transferred for burial at various cemeteries. Some of the deceased will be interred with their families.
There was no sign of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, but President Masoud Pezeshkian marched in the procession.
The funeral was a reminder of the heavy toll Iran had paid not only in losses from the top echelon of its military forces, but also from its contentious nuclear program. Among more than 600 people killed in the Israeli attacks, 90 of them were military personnel, according to Iranian state television. The dead included at least 11 prominent nuclear scientists.
The coffins were covered in a clear wrap over an Iranian flag and scattered with rose petals. One truck held the caskets of children, according to Press TV, a state media outlet. As the dead passed, mourners reached out to kiss or touch the coffins.
State news media did not immediately release a list of all those included in funeral, the largest from the war thus far. But the Tasnim news agency, affiliated with the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, reported that some of the top officers in the Iranian military were being laid to rest.
Official coverage of the funeral included a striking image of about 40 coffins before they joined the procession, all stacked one atop the other in rows of 10, with the picture of each victim affixed to the end of the coffin.
Among those honored were Gen. Hossein Salami, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards — Iran’s powerful military force.
Gen. Amir Ali Hajizadeh, the head of the Revolutionary Guards’ air force unit, was among them. He was seen by Israeli officials as one of Iran’s most intelligent military commanders whose death would have been a real blow to the unit’s operations.
Both were killed in the first days of the war.
Esmail Ghaani, the commander of Iran’s elite Quds Force, attended the funeral.
The Quds Force, is a branch of the Revolutionary Guards that oversees Iran’s proxy militias around the Middle East, including Hezbollah in Lebanon, Hamas in Gaza, the Houthis in Yemen and militias in Iraq.
One senior figure in the Quds Force, Mohammed Said Izadi, was among those included in the funeral. The Israeli military said he was a longtime target of Israeli intelligence who oversaw Iran’s ties to groups like Hamas, which led the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that ignited the war in Gaza.
Israeli officials said Mr. Izadi led the Palestinian affairs branch of the Quds Force. He was one of the few people who knew in advance about Hamas’s plan to launch the surprise Oct. 7 attack, The New York Times reported last year.
Maj. Gen. Ali Shadmani, another top military commander, was also commemorated at the funeral. The commander he replaced, Gholamali Rashid, had just been killed by Israel. He was named to head the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, the most important economic arm of Revolutionary Guards.
Maj. Gen. Mohammad Bagheri, the chief of staff of the Iranian armed forces, was mourned at Saturday’s funeral.
Nuclear scientists were included in the funeral procession on Saturday.
After the United States joined the Israeli attack on Iran last weekend to bomb three nuclear sites, President Trump declared that Iran’s nuclear program had sustained major damage. But other assessments have been more mixed.
Iran has long held that its nuclear development program was for peaceful purposes, but Israel said it started the war on June 13 to take out nuclear and military targets.
Ayatollah Khamenei appeared to break an extended public silence to issue a statement posted on Thursday claiming victory and criticizing the United States. That irked Mr. Trump, who had helped push through a cease-fire.
Mr. Trump told a news conference on Friday that he would consider attacking Iran again, while on social media he wrote that he would drop his effort to have sanctions against Iran removed and suggested that the supreme leader should be grateful that his life was spared.
Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, responded with a post on X, saying that if Mr. Trump genuinely sought a nuclear deal with Iran, he should abandon “the disrespectful and unacceptable tone” toward Ayatollah Khamenei and “stop hurting his millions of heartfelt followers.”
Neil MacFarquhar has been a Times reporter since 1995, writing about a range of topics from war to politics to the arts, both internationally and in the United States.
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