The body of Iran’s slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was lying in state in a vast hall in Tehran on Friday as clerics, officials, foreign dignitaries and other mourners paid their respects ​after his 37-year rule.

Iran is staging a week of mass funeral processions for Khamenei — killed in February by US and Israeli airstrikes at the start of a four-month war — in a show of public devotion ‌to the Islamic Republic’s theocratic state and revolutionary fire.

Khamenei’s body was expected to be taken to Qom, Najaf and Kerbala, before being laid to rest on Thursday in Mashhad, home to the country’s holiest pilgrim shrine.

Critical moment for Islamic Republic

His coffin was unveiled late on Thursday to a throng of sobbing supporters, mourning in time to a sung lament as flowers were thrown from the bier into the crowd. On Friday, the coffin — and those of family members killed with him — was ​laid in state in the great prayer hall built to honour his predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The funeral comes at a critical moment 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 greatest and most powerful foes.

But nearly five decades after the 1979 revolution, and for all the official ⁠proclamations of national unity in the run-up to Khamenei’s funeral, the Islamic Republic has rarely been so internally fractured.

The authorities are mounting a display of state power and mass support, mobilising what they hope will be millions of mourners to take part in the funeral.

Tehran streets were tightly controlled, with military and police vehicles lining the major roads and police and members of the black-shirted volunteer Basij paramilitary force patrolling on motorbikes. Iran warned the United States and Israel against any attacks during the funeral.

After the coffins arrived on Friday, borne high across the upraised hands of a waiting crowd, ​they were laid in the prayer hall on a white, stepped dais before a high, intricately tiled, arched recess, flanked by national and black mourning flags.

Delegations, including from Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen, home to the strongest proxies in Iran’s network of regional power, followed each other into the hall to stand before ‌the coffins.

Representatives from ⁠Russia and China were expected to attend. Iraqi President Abdul Latif Rashid, Armenian Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan and Pakistani Interior Minister Syed Mohsin Naqvi arrived in Tehran for the funeral.

Families of Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah and senior commander Imad Mughniyeh, close Lebanese allies of Iran, killed in Israeli strikes, attended the ceremony.

Sobbing crowds, funeral tour of Iran and Iraq

In central ⁠Tehran overnight, a crowd stood sobbing and chanting, led by a Basij member, as others handed out posters of the late Khamenei.

“God willing, only by avenging his blood, demanding justice for it, and ensuring that our leader’s blood is not left unavenged, can this sorrow of the people be somewhat alleviated,” said Mobina Razaaghi, an 18-year-old student from Isfahan, attending the ​funeral events with classmates.