A powerful Iranian general who commands the country's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) has resurfaced as Tehran prepared for the multiday funeral of the late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Images released by Iranian state media showed Gen. Ahmad Vahidi attending a meeting on funeral arrangements for Khamenei, 86, before taking a seat beside the supreme leader's casket during a private memorial service Thursday night near Khamenei's former residence in downtown Tehran.
Analysts say Vahidi has emerged as a key architect of Iran's hard-line approach to negotiations over a possible permanent end to the conflict with the United States.
He is believed to be among a small circle of senior officials in direct contact with Iran's new Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who has remained out of public view after reportedly being wounded in the Feb. 28 Israeli strikes that killed his father.
Vahidi himself has not been seen publicly since Feb. 8, weeks before the Iran war began.
Video released by Iranian state media showed the mourning ceremony for Khamenei near the Husseiniyah at his compound in Tehran.
An Israeli airstrike in the opening moments of the war killed Khamenei and several members of his family. State media said Khamenei's body rested in a coffin on a stage, with red tulips arranged in front of it. What appeared to be paper butterflies hung from the ceiling above the casket.
The black-clad mourners, whom state media identified as relatives of those killed in the 12-day war in 2025 and the recent Iran war, threw scarves and other items for attendants to brush against the coffin, a common practice in Iran.
Later, state media showed images of Khamenei's casket draped with a red flag bearing the white calligraphy "Ya Hussein," a Shiite expression commemorating the seventh-century martyrdom of the Prophet Muhammad's grandson. The flag had flown over the golden-domed Imam Hussein shrine in Karbala, Iraq. It traditionally symbolizes the spilled blood of someone unjustly killed and serves as a call for vengeance.
Beginning Saturday, Iran will hold a multiday funeral for Khamenei, and his body will be transported to cities in Iran and neighboring Iraq.
The funeral will begin at the Grand Mosalla in Tehran, where authorities plan to shut down streets and much of daily life as mourners commemorate Khamenei, who led Iran for decades while maintaining a confrontational stance toward the West.
