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The massive turnout for Iran's slain supreme leader Ayatollah Khamenei's funeral procession in Tehran reflects the country's unity.
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00:00Good evening, you're watching NewsTrack with me, Maria Shaquille.
00:04The images from Ayatollah Khamenei's funeral in Tehran are striking.
00:09Massive crowds filling the streets, black-clad moaners marching in unison,
00:16raising anti-America and Israel chants.
00:19The funeral procession has transformed into a powerful political and diplomatic statement.
00:25For a regime that has faced years of public anger over economic hardship,
00:31restrictions and political repression, the scale of the mobilization raises a crucial question now.
00:37Has the U.S.-Israel's war on Iran ended up doing what decades of state messaging could not,
00:46bringing more Iranians behind the leadership?
00:50Has Donald Trump ended up uniting Iran behind the regime,
00:54now more than ever before.
00:56Before I bring in the guests, here's the report.
01:06From mourning to mobilization.
01:15Four days of public mourning and the political message is only growing louder.
01:25The funeral procession for Iran's slain supreme leader, Ayatollah Khamenei,
01:31has drawn enormous crowds dressed in black,
01:35with red flags of martyrdom visible across the skyline.
01:41Chants of death to America and death to Israel are heard as moaners
01:47packed Tehran's streets in one of the biggest state-organized displays in years.
02:04The message is clear, that Iran remains defiant and united.
02:16People have written about longing, about bravery and revenge.
02:19We hope Agha's blood doesn't remain unanswered.
02:26I feel brave.
02:27People have come to their selves.
02:28They support each other.
02:29They just realized who they have lost, a leader of the nation and Agha.
02:33When Agha died, I felt if my own father had died again.
02:45I have a strange feeling.
02:46When my father died, I didn't cry as much as I cried when the supreme leader was martyred.
02:57The carefully choreographed ceremonies are now moving behind Tehran to the holy city of Qom,
03:05before continuing to Najaf and Karbala in neighboring Iraq.
03:13The symbolism is unmistakable.
03:18The leadership wants to frame the assassination of its supreme leader not just as a national tragedy,
03:25but as an attack on the nation itself.
03:32But U.S. President Donald Trump seems determined to do even more damage than he already has.
03:39He has once again warned Iran it would either make a deal or Washington would finish the job.
03:46Even as he said he preferred diplomacy,
03:49Trump warned the U.S. could cripple Iran's infrastructure within hours.
03:55We're either going to make a deal or we're going to finish the job, okay?
03:58And it won't be tough to finish the job.
04:01I'd rather make a deal because I don't want to affect 91 million people.
04:06We can knock down their bridges in one hour.
04:09We can knock out their energy supply, all of those big plants that they built,
04:14big, beautiful, modern plants that had a lot of money.
04:17They don't have any money now.
04:19We haven't given them any money.
04:20But we can knock out their electricity and power generating plants.
04:25And I would say a small part of an afternoon, every plant will be gone.
04:32And they know that.
04:34Iran's response was swift.
04:36Foreign Minister Abbas Dharachi has said meaningful negotiations can't begin under threats.
04:44For Iran's leadership, Trump's rhetoric may be proving politically valuable.
04:49For years, Iran has been marked by deep public frustration over the economy,
04:55political repression and international isolation.
04:59But history has repeatedly shown that when Iran faces what many perceive as an external threat,
05:06internal divisions often give way to nationalism.
05:12Even many Iranian critical of their regime can rally behind the state
05:17when they believe the country's sovereignty is under attack.
05:21That is the narrative Tehran is now amplifying.
05:28The assassination, the funeral processions and Trump's warnings are being woven into a single story,
05:36one of resistance against foreign pressure.
05:43The Iranian side is also not happy with the continuous operation of Israel in the south of Lebanon.
05:50So we have to see, we have to very consciously, very, very, very alertlessly see next 48 hours
05:57because after 9th of July, we will see what will be the action from the Iranian side
06:03because this is the main important aspect which they wanted to complete.
06:07And when the funeral ceremony is completed,
06:09then we will see the diplomatic and the more aggressive actions by the IRGC.
06:15Whether that unity survives after the mourning ends is another question.
06:21With Sumit Chaudhree in Tehran, Bureau Report, India Today.
06:31Joining me first on the show is Dr. Sayyad Imamian.
06:35He's an assistant professor at Tehran Polytechnic University.
06:38Dr. Imamian, the scale of Supreme Leader Khamnai's funeral has drawn global attention.
06:46What overarching message do you think Iran is sending to the world,
06:50particularly to the wider Islamic community,
06:53through this event and the participation of various delegations?
07:02Actually, I'm not going to play the game of the numbers.
07:08But it's very important to understand that from an Iranian comparative point of view,
07:18we never experience a kind of mass participation of a specific event,
07:29like a funeral, like we experienced in the last few days in Tehran.
07:33And I'm going to highlight the importance of other events.
07:41Today, events in Qom and the event that would take place both in Iraq and also in Mashhad.
07:50Altogether, that would create a momentum that we never experienced before
07:58in terms of the scale of the participants and also what's more important even than the funeral itself
08:08is the participation of the millions of the Iranians for almost 140 evenings across the country.
08:19It's more than 420 neighborhoods, only in Tehran, that the peoples are gathering every evening.
08:30And it is something that for some analysts like me was not expected before.
08:36So it seems that the Iranian society as a whole is thinking of current situation
08:42as a time to move beyond a lot of political disagreements and sociocultural differences
08:50that a country as big and as a diversified as Iran is experiencing.
08:55And it's usual. It's not something abnormal.
08:58But at the end of the day, the country and the society as a whole has come together
09:03to send a message of protecting Iranian sovereignty and territorial integrity
09:12and Iranian civilizational dignity as the highest ranking priority for everyone in the society.
09:21While there are a huge number of the people that they are not in political agreement
09:28with the current government or even with the late supreme leader.
09:33But even from those political camps that they have been always disagreeing
09:40the late supreme leader's political point of view,
09:43they have participated very actively in the funeral and in the last 140 evenings
09:50as a sense of, as a task of projecting patriotism and protecting national security and dignity.
10:06How significant is Riyadh's presence at this moment?
10:11And what does it signal about potential shifts in Iran-Saudi relations or broader regional dynamics?
10:23Why Iranians have criticized Saudi Arabia for, like other, most of the Arab countries across Persian rules,
10:34for providing their territory, their lands and their skies for aggressors to violate Iranian sovereignty?
10:43And it was a very clear red line from a national security point of view.
10:48And Iranians retaliated to those countries, not because of a kind of the enmity between us and Saudi Arabia
10:59or other Arab neighbors, but because to retaliate the aggressors,
11:05the U.S. and Israelis that they have used those territories to attack Iran.
11:11But there has been different reactions or different kind of policies from countries in the Persian rules.
11:26Of course, Omanis and Qataris have been very helpful during the war,
11:33accepting that they are not going to allow any foreigners to use their territory to attack Iran anymore.
11:40And they have been very approachable and very friendly towards Iran.
11:46And they have projected their sympathy with Iranians with regards to the attacks on Iranian sovereignty.
11:56Of course, there has been a hostile stance from UAE, Bahrain, and Kuwait.
12:03But Saudi Arabia has been very much in between.
12:07I would say Saudi has showed us a very mature policy not to be outraged by the Iranian retaliatory attacks.
12:21And it was, I think, a kind of understanding within the Saudi political system that it has been their own
12:31fault
12:31to let others to use their territory.
12:35And since the war was over, Saudis have been approaching Iranians to find a bilateral agreement
12:42to make sure that such kind of attacks won't happen using the Saudi territory.
12:51And Iranians are going to make sure and assure Saudi counterparts that they won't attack any retaliatory attack
13:02once the Saudis are going to ban foreigners from attacking the Iranian territory.
13:08So, it seems that this is a kind of the mushwar understandings coming to the scene.
13:15So, the Saudis' delegation here also conveyed such a message, in my view.
13:22And it has been received well by Iranians.
13:25You know, I have a couple of more questions, Dr. Imamian.
13:28And some observers see this funeral as a moment that could advance a larger Islamic unification
13:36or realignment within the Islamic nations and the GCC.
13:41Do you view it as accelerating such a shift?
13:46Or is it more symbolic than substantive in changing regional access?
13:55If you know, the funeral will take place tomorrow in Iraq, in three different cities, in Baghdad, in Najaf and
14:03Kerala.
14:04And it is a very huge and important sign of integrity between Iranian and Iraqis
14:14as two sovereign states, but very much integrated and interconnected.
14:20So, I would say there has been also a huge participation of non-Iranians to the funeral
14:27from different countries across the region, particularly from Muslim countries in the region.
14:34So, I think, generally speaking, with regards to the personality of the late supreme leader
14:41as the one who was not only a patriot man of defending Iranian national security and sovereignty,
14:49he was the one who has supported very remarkably the cause of all anti-colonial and Islamic causes in the
15:02region,
15:02particularly supporting Palestinian cause, supporting Iraqi once the country was attacked and invaded by Americans,
15:12in support of the Lebanese and Syrians in support of the Lebanese and Syrians once their countries and their territory
15:18was violated by Israeli's appropriation.
15:22So, he was the hero, not only for Iranians, he was the hero defending the right of peaceful lives across
15:35the region.
15:38From Palestine to Syria to Iraq and to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
15:47So, he was by international community rather than just Iranians.
15:54So, in that sense, I would say that the funeral would be an important turning point with regards to regional
16:01integrity
16:02and Islamic unity, as you want to phrase it in this way.
16:06Let me ask my last question, and this is with regards to the new supreme leader, that's Mushtaba Khamenei.
16:13And he did not attend the funeral, and that was because of security reasons,
16:18while his other family members, including his brothers, did.
16:22What does it actually say about the transition?
16:29The constitutional concept, and it was a very important political.
16:34Since then, he has been clearly in power by making the most important decisions.
16:41You know that he was the one that he rejected a nuclear talk in Islamabad.
16:48And he was the one that he personally insisted on having ending the war negotiation something as the first step
16:58and a prerequisite for any further nuclear talks.
17:03So, that was something that happened a few weeks ago and signed between Iranian president and President Trump.
17:11The MOU that is very much ending the war in the MOU and doesn't say anything important regarding the nuclear
17:21case.
17:22So, it seems that he's the one that is really in power.
17:26But with regards to his appearance, in public appearance, of course, we know that what is happening now across the
17:34world,
17:34and particularly during the war in Iran, is a very clear manifestation of the state terrorism.
17:42Israelis and Americans are terrorizing and assassinating anyone in political and religious position that they don't like to talk with.
17:53So, it's a very jungle-style international order that we're experiencing now.
17:59So, he has been asked not to be publicly accessible until the security concerns have been very much stabilized.
18:16All right, Dr. Imamian, really appreciate your time.
18:18Let me bring in Abbas Milani, who's the Director of Iranian Studies at Stanford University
18:24and a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, California.
18:29Professor Milani, Iran has turned Khamenei's funeral into a major state event.
18:35Beyond paying tribute to its supreme leader, what message, according to you,
18:41is the regime trying to send to the Iranian people, to the region and also to the world?
18:47I think to the Iranian people and to the world, it's trying to send the same message,
18:52that it has some base of support, that it still has the possibility to mobilize people
18:59and use people as essentially pops, political props,
19:05because in the kind of regime that Iran is,
19:08mass demonstrations are instruments of political power, political coercion,
19:13and political symbols of authority.
19:17That, to me, is the message.
19:20The world and Iranian people, of course, read it differently.
19:23Iranian people know what kind of an event it was.
19:26It was clearly a state-orchestrated event.
19:29They mobilized this population at great expense.
19:32They constantly intimidated workers, employees, government employees, neighborhoods to participate.
19:42And I think, at the end, the numbers that they were hoping for did not show up,
19:49although a considerable number of people did show up.
19:51The funeral, sir, comes at a time when Iran is balancing public grief,
19:57regional tensions, and diplomatic engagement.
19:59How does this movement influence Iran's strategic calculations,
20:04and does it make Iran more uncompromising, or could it encourage greater pragmatism?
20:14It's not very clear how it's going to impact it,
20:17because at the same time that they were trying to show strength and authority and legitimacy,
20:24we know they attacked a couple of boats in the Strait of Hormuz,
20:29in spite of what they had apparently promised the Americans not to do.
20:36Within the demonstrations, there were a lot of people shouting slogans
20:41against the negotiations with the U.S.
20:44And they said one of the most preeminent slogans was,
20:48we want revenge, we don't want an agreement.
20:51So you get, at least I, get contradictory messages from inside Iran and from these demonstrations.
20:59One is that there is a lunatic, radical fringe that thinks they have won this war.
21:06They think they can dictate to the world.
21:09They think they are the new superpower of the region.
21:13But on the other hand, there are people within the regime,
21:17and certainly outside the regime,
21:18that recognize how weakened the regime is,
21:22how weakened the economy is,
21:24and how desperate Iran needs, of course, economic relief,
21:30how people need economic relief.
21:32So I think you get two different messages,
21:36one from the lunatic fringe that says we don't want disagreement,
21:41and one from the people like Qali Boff,
21:44who I think clearly have seen the writing on the wall
21:47that the regime is profoundly weakened,
21:50profoundly isolated internationally and regionally and domestically.
21:55We have very good polling that says at most 12% of the people of Iran
22:01are in favor of the status quo.
22:04They couldn't even get that 12% to show up in this,
22:09what they think was historic burial rights.
22:14But still, you don't get one message.
22:18You get two different messages,
22:19and how Iran will behave, I think,
22:22will depend which of these two fractions within the regime
22:25will get the upper hand.
22:27All right, Professor Milani,
22:29for decades you have studied the institutions
22:31that underpin the Islamic Republic.
22:35Does an event like this reinforce the regime's legitimacy and resilience,
22:40or can such moments actually expose
22:43underlying political and social,
22:46or should I say societal, vulnerabilities?
22:52Well, I think it certainly can,
22:56because, as I said, in my view,
22:58this is a regime that is a kind of a totalitarian regime,
23:03that it moves people masses
23:08and uses masses as tools of power,
23:12as tools of legitimacy,
23:13without being willing to, for example,
23:17allow itself to be elected.
23:18They have, again, give you an example,
23:22they have, they being the IRGC,
23:25the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps,
23:28they have behind closed doors elected someone,
23:32supposedly the supreme leader,
23:34as supposedly the representative of God on earth,
23:38someone who has never talked to the Iranian people,
23:40someone whose picture has rarely ever been seen
23:43by the people of Iran,
23:44someone who, for the last four months,
23:48has never appeared in public.
23:50Not one word of him has been directly quoted.
23:54There are a few handful of declarations on his behalf.
23:58Nobody knows where he is,
24:00nobody knows how well he is,
24:02nobody even knows,
24:03at least I don't know,
24:04whether he actually exists or not.
24:06There is conflicting evidence about that.
24:10So the effort was to consolidate the notion
24:14that there is a unified leadership
24:16and that there is that leadership
24:18that is trying to steer the ship of state.
24:22But I think what reality is,
24:25what reality indicates is that
24:28there's something far more complicated going on,
24:31that there are people within the regime
24:34who want to change course.
24:36There are people within the regime
24:37who want to double down
24:39on the past policies of Mr. Khamenei.
24:42And now, apparently...
24:43Let me ask my last question, Professor Milani.
24:46Looking beyond the funeral,
24:48what should the world be watching
24:50most closely over the coming weeks?
24:53According to you.
24:55I think all three of those.
24:57And I think part of the problem
24:59with the international coverage of Iran
25:01is that it's often one aspect
25:04to the detriment of the other two.
25:06I think, as you have very succinctly put,
25:09those are the three things
25:11that I think we should be looking for.
25:13And I think those are,
25:14as in almost every case,
25:16but certainly about Iran,
25:17that I know a little about,
25:19those three aspects are very, very interconnected.
25:22And anyone who wants to really understand Iran
25:26needs to understand, first, the Iranian society.
25:29All international politics is invariably also
25:34and unmistakably domestic politics.
25:37And if you don't understand the domestic politics of Iran,
25:41if you don't understand the economic realities of this regime,
25:45if you don't understand its posturing
25:48and its conflicted identity,
25:52if you don't understand its very fraught legitimacy
25:56in spite of this showing of several hundred thousand people
25:59in the streets,
26:00I don't think you can chart the right course.
26:04All right, Professor Milani,
26:06I appreciate your time.
26:06Thank you for joining us.
26:08With that, it's a wrap from me
26:10on this edition of Newstrap.
26:12Thanks so much for watching.
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