“I want to say one sentence to President Trump and the world,” declared a grey-haired man named Mojtaba, who came to us saying he had a message.
“Soon, very soon you will see signs of revenge at the top of the White House, and soon the colour of the White House will be the colour of my red flag.”
“Some of these calls are just ritualistic,” a government official told me. “But the anger is real among hardline critics within the system who oppose the new deal with the United States which killed our leader. “
To address a dire financial situation, Iran’s new leaders, after surviving weeks of war, must now keep negotiating if they wish to see badly needed relief through the easing of sanctions and unfreezing of assets.
Government supporters in what were welcoming crowds kept approaching foreigners – including what the government says were 400 social media influencers – to ask “where are you from?” They often urged visiting media to “tell the truth”.
But even in this throng there were other voices too. Two young Iranian women, clad in the black cloaks of most female mourners, pulled us aside to whisper that the “real voices of revolution” had been heard in the protests just months ago on these same streets.
The road ahead is still uncertain as Iran buries the last of the first-generation founders of its 1979 revolution.
Nearly four decades ago, I was in Iran when it buried its first supreme leader Ayatollah Khomeini. In the frenzied stampede, his flimsy wooden coffin broke and his white shrouded body tumbled into the crowds.
Iran enters a new era with its third Supreme Leader, 56-year-old Mojtaba Khamanei, who’s still not been seen in public since the air strikes which killed his father severely injured him.
The sight of his three brothers at the open-air Grand Musalla mosque compound, where their father lay in state made his absence all the more conspicuous.
Iranian officials point to Israel’s continuing threats to assassinate him too.
“He’s in my heart and I hope he is safe from Trump and Netanyahu,” insisted one woman who had travelled with her family from Hamadan, a four-hour drive away, to join the procession.
But the organisers of what they’ve called the “event of the century” have tried to maximise other symbols.
The biggest of all is the colossal statue of a clenched fist that now towers over Enqelab or Revolution Square – the “fist of defiance” meant to send a message to enemies outside and inside Iran that their Islamic Republic cannot be defeated.
The BBC’s chief international correspondent Lyse Doucet is reporting from Tehran on condition that none of her material is used on the BBC’s Persian Service. These restrictions apply to all international media organisations operating in Iran.
