The six-day funeral ceremonies for Iran's late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has begun in Tehran.
Doors to the Mosalla prayer grounds opened in the early morning, with hundreds of supporters of the Islamic republic waiting to enter.
Security is exceptionally tight around the vast prayer complex. Riot police and other security forces have been deployed throughout the area, roads surrounding the Mosalla were closed hours before the ceremonies began, and reports said authorities had established a no-vehicle zone extending more than one kilometer from the venue.
Coffins containing the bodies of Khamenei and four of his family members killed in the first day of the US-Israeli war against Iran are on display and will remain there until July 6.
Khamenei's remains will then be taken to the holy city of Qom before being put on display in Baghdad, Karbala, and Najaf in neighboring Iraq. Khamenei will be buried in his home city of Mashhad in northeastern Iran on July 9.
Senior Iranian officials and foreign dignitaries paid their respects on July 3, but Mojtaba Khamenei, the late supreme leader's second-born son and his successor, did not make an appearance.
The younger Khamenei, the Islamic republic's third supreme leader, has not been seen in public since he suffered injuries in the same attack that killed his father as well as his wife.
It remains unclear who will pray over Khamenei's remains in Tehran on July 5, but reports in Iran suggest it will not be the new supreme leader but a high-ranking cleric.
In the lead-up to the funeral, Iranian authorities variously described the ceremony as "the most important event of the century" and "the most unique event in human history."
But Taghi Rahmi, a rights activist and husband of Nobel Peace Prize Winner Narges Mohammadi, told RFE/RL's Radio Farda that the drawn-out affair is designed as a show of the state "still standing" and reasserting itself after the war.
It will also seek to gloss over the thousands of deaths at the hands of the Khamenei regime, which had a long record of executions, mass arrests, torture, prison abuse, and deadly crackdowns on dissent -- including the persecution of women, activists, journalists, and political prisoners.
