Saudi Arabia and Qatar sent senior officials to the funeral of Iran’s slain supreme leader, a display of diplomatic protocol that drew criticism after Iranian organizers appeared to taunt the visiting delegations. As Saudi Arabia’s deputy foreign minister approached Ali Khamenei’s coffin, Quranic verses recalling the Prophet Muhammad’s victory over a much larger army were recited — widely interpreted as a reference to Tehran’s confrontation with Israel and the US. Softer passages accompanied the Qatari and Omani delegations. Bahrain, Kuwait, and the UAE did not attend.
The funeral was also used to project defiance, with thousands of mourners filling Tehran and chanting for revenge. Iranian state media described one group of mourners as a Gulf Shia delegation, but Observer Research Foundation researcher Mahdi Jasim Ghuloom said this overstated their significance: “The front row consists of a US-designated terrorist [and the] term ‘delegation’ is also debatable given that its members are mostly based in Iran.”