MASHHAD – A banner in English hung over the crowd at the Imam Reza shrine as Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s funeral cortege arrived Saturday: “hey Trump we will kill you.” Beside it, mourners carried a painted caricature offering a bounty for the assassination of the American president. Within hours, Trump had posted on Truth Social that 1,000 American missiles were locked on Tehran.
The two images came from the same moment but addressed entirely different audiences. In Mashhad, an estimated three million mourners converged on the Razavi Shrine complex carrying red flags (the color of vengeance in Shia tradition) for the burial of Iran’s supreme leader of 36 years. In Washington, the president of the United States announced his military stood ready to completely decimate Iran.
Khamenei’s body was interred inside the shrine grounds Saturday afternoon following a ceremony attended by 160 schoolchildren in white carrying flowers to the gravesite. His eldest son Mojtaba, long rumored as a potential successor, was absent from the public proceedings. Prayers were led by Mostafa Khamenei, the younger son.
The death chants and placards were not isolated expressions. Mourners interviewed outside the shrine gates repeated versions of the same threat. “He killed our leader. He will be killed,” said a woman who gave her name only as Hoda. Mehdi Rahmani, a 67-year-old retired soldier from Isfahan, said he had carried his banner deliberately in English. “The whole world should know what we are willing to do,” he told TRT World.
Trump posted on Truth Social on Saturday morning. “Iran has 1,000 of our missiles aimed at them,” he wrote. “They must choose wisely because the United States of America will, if we decide to do so, completely decimate Iran. Be very careful!”
The post did not name a trigger. The ceasefire signed in Islamabad last month was declared “over” by Trump earlier this week, though US negotiators remained in the region. Steve Witkoff and Brian Hook were in contact with Emirati officials Friday. JD Vance spoke by phone with Oman’s foreign minister. Marco Rubio briefed allied ambassadors in Washington. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi was in Muscat simultaneously for direct Hormuz working-group talks, the first round since Trump’s ceasefire declaration.
An explosion struck a residential area in eastern Tehran province Saturday morning, Iranian state media reported. It was the fourth such blast in the province in six days. No group claimed responsibility and no casualty figures were immediately released. Iran’s government did not attribute the explosion to any external actor.
Araghchi, speaking to Iranian state television from Muscat before the funeral procession reached its final station, said Iran had upheld every commitment in the Islamabad memorandum. “Iran has so far kept its word,” he said, calling the document “serious” on both sides. Ali Ansari, Iran’s chief sanctions negotiator, confirmed separately that paragraph 9 of the MOU, which covers temporary oil export permissions, remained in technical implementation despite Trump’s ceasefire announcement.
The distance between Araghchi’s diplomatic register and the sentiments visible in Mashhad laid bare a fracture that runs through Iran’s political structure. Hardliners in the Revolutionary Guard and within Qom’s clerical establishment had opposed the Islamabad talks from their opening. The funeral became, for that faction, an occasion to state that opposition in a language Trump could read.
What the Truth Social post does to the diplomatic track remained an open question Saturday evening. Araghchi’s team was still in Muscat. Witkoff’s team was still in Abu Dhabi. Whether a funeral crowd carrying English-language assassination banners provides hardliners in Tehran the leverage to end the talks, or whether both governments absorb the spectacle and continue regardless, is the question neither side addressed publicly.
Saturday’s ceremony in Mashhad did not shift the hardline establishment’s position. It amplified it. The banner calling for Trump’s death was removed by Iranian security personnel within two hours of being hung. By then, photographs had already circulated widely on Telegram channels across Iran, framed by the red flags of vengeance behind it.
Iran’s diplomatic mission in Muscat continued through Saturday afternoon. The Eastern Herald earlier reported on the parallel tracks of Gulf strikes and Khamenei’s funeral preparations as Iran absorbed consecutive blows in the days before his death.
