Ahmadinejad back from the dead at Khamenei’s funeral

Iran’s former president has appeared at the funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei despite having been reported killed at the start of the war.

Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was one of millions of mourners who poured into Tehran dressed in black on Monday to escort the slain supreme leader’s coffin through the capital.

The former hardline president, who governed from 2005 to 2013, was declared dead by several Iranian state-affiliated media outlets on the opening day of the war, when Israeli and US strikes killed Khamenei and much of the country’s leadership.

It was thought he had been killed when a missile struck near his home.

He was never seen or heard from in the months that followed, and no official confirmation or denial of his fate was issued, leaving his status among the many uncertainties of the war’s chaotic first days.

On Monday, however, he was seen in public for the first time since the war, moving among the mourners in a jacket with a mask pulled down to his throat.

His reappearance came a day after the country’s other living former presidents – Mohammad Khatami and Hassan Rouhani – were absent from the ceremonies, to which critics said they had not been invited.

Ahmadinejad emerged into one of the largest funerals in the country’s history. Abbas Araghchi, the foreign minister, joined the crowds too, photographed riding on the back of a motorbike to move through the crowd.

Khamenei’s flag-draped coffin, and those of family members killed alongside him on Feb 28 sat atop a truck decorated to resemble the ornamental grating around an imam’s shrine.

Helicopter footage on state television showed the crowd stretching for miles in central Tehran.

Authorities predicted the event could draw as many as 20 million people.

Trump had hoped the war would topple the Islamic Republic, but the sea of mourners showed the extent to which he had been misled about the mood inside Iran.