The casket appeared at 07:14 local time. When guards pulled back the cloth at Tehran's Imam Khomeini Mosalla Grand Mosque, the crowd broke into open weeping — the first public confirmation that the 86-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was gone. His death, the result of a US-Israeli air strike at the opening of the two countries' war with Iran, has already reshaped the Middle East in ways that analysts are still struggling to measure. Saturday's ceremony is only the beginning.

Iranian authorities have scheduled multiple days of official mourning, a sequence designed to allow millions of citizens across the country to pay their respects. Several hundred people had already gathered outside the Grand Mosalla on Friday evening, hours before the formal proceedings began, standing in lines that stretched far beyond the complex's gates. By morning, those numbers had swelled dramatically. Iran's new Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps chief, whose name and identity had been kept secret since the outbreak of hostilities, broke cover on Saturday to attend the ceremonies.

His appearance at the mosque was brief but significant: it was the first time the IRGC's new leadership had been seen publicly since the conflict began.