by ELIS GJEVORI & MARWA KOCAK
The Quran recitations at Ali Khamenei’s funeral revealed Tehran speaking as a victor, not a mourner
When the Saudi delegation stepped forward to pay respects at the coffin of the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Tehran’s Grand Mosalla, the Quran recitation that followed did not go unnoticed.
The verse was Al Imran 3:13, the passage describing the Battle of Badr, where a vastly outnumbered and poorly equipped Muslim force routed a much larger army “by the will of God”. It was a clear reference to what many are increasingly calling Iran’s victory over the US and Israel in their war on the country.
Badr was fought in what is today Saudi Arabia in 624 CE. The question is whether the recitation was a compliment, a taunt, or both – but it was unlikely to have been random.
Read generously, the verse gestures at one of Islam’s first victories and a shared civilisational memory between Tehran and Riyadh.
But Iran has not only survived the war but arguably, it may have emerged from it stronger, with control of the Strait of Hormuz now tantalisingly close to becoming a fait accompli.
Saudi Arabia, however, remained quietly aligned with the US during the war and, according to some reports, even covertly attacked Iran.
Read against that context, the verse takes on a sharper tone. Riyadh stayed on the sidelines or, according to those reports, acted against Iran, while Israel sought to “plunge the region into ruin”.
Iran, meanwhile, fought and held firm against Tehran’s enemies and, by extension, anyone standing too close to them.
Saudi Arabia was not the only country in attendance, but one of more than 30 delegations that came to pay respects to the country’s late leader.
The list of dignitaries offered Iran its own show of strength, signalling that the country remains far from as isolated as the US or Israel would like it to be.
Khamenei, 86, was assassinated on 28 February in Israeli-US strikes on his residence in central Tehran. The attack also killed his 14-month-old granddaughter, son-in-law and daughter-in-law.
His body lay in state for three days at Tehran’s Grand Mosalla, the country’s largest prayer complex and the venue for major state occasions.
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