Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif attends a farewell ceremony for Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Photo: Reuters
Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif said on Saturday that Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamenei would be remembered for generations for his wisdom, leadership and profound influence on Iran and the wider region.
“The late Supreme Leader’s wisdom, leadership and profound influence on Iran and the wider region will be remembered for generations,” Prime Minister Shehbaz said in a speech at X.
Khamenei was killed at the age of 86 on February 28 during a joint US-Israeli airstrike in Tehran on his residence. His six-day funeral and memorial procession prompted several world leaders to pay their respects to the slain supreme leader.
Funeral processions for Khamenei have begun today in Tehran and will conclude on July 9 with his funeral in his hometown of Mashhad, with further ceremonies planned in Qom and Iraq between those dates.
The Prime Minister in his statement said he paid his respects and conveyed deepest condolences on behalf of the government and people of Pakistan to the government and brotherly people of Iran at the funeral ceremony.
While affirming Islamabad’s solidarity with the Iranian people, Prime Minister Shehbaz said, “As a brotherly neighbor, Pakistan stands with Iran in this time of grief.”
“To demonstrate our solidarity with the Iranian people, I was accompanied by a senior delegation including DPM Ishaq Dar, CDF & COAS Field Marshal Asim Munir and senior parliamentarians including Chairman Pakistan People’s Party Bilawal Bhutto Zardari and Speaker National Assembly Sardar Ayaz Sadiq,” he added.
Read: Iranians flock to week-long funeral rites for Khamenei
A day earlier, Prime Minister Shehbaz and CDF Munir attended the funeral ceremony of Iran’s slain Supreme Leader Khamenei.
During a one-day visit to Iran, the Prime Minister expressed full solidarity with the Supreme Leader, His Eminence Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Hosseini Khamenei, President Masoud Pezeshkian and the brotherly people of Iran in this moment of national mourning and prayed to Allah Almighty for forgiveness of the late leader.
Critical moment for the Islamic Republic
Khamenei’s casket was unveiled late Thursday to a throng of sobbing supporters who swayed and bobbed their heads to a chanted dirge as flowers were thrown from the bier into the crowd. On Friday, the coffin – and family members who were killed with him – were laid out in the great prayer hall built to honor his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.
The funeral came at a critical time for Iran, where the clerical rulers backed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps are riding high from surviving what they saw as an existential war against their biggest and most powerful enemies.
But nearly five decades after the 1979 revolution, and despite all the official proclamations of national unity in the run-up to Khamenei’s funeral, the Islamic Republic has rarely been so internally divided.
Tehran’s streets were tightly controlled, with military and police vehicles lining major roads, and police and members of the black-shirted volunteer Basij paramilitary force patrolling on motorbikes. Iran warned the US and Israel against any attack during the funeral.
