IRAN TO HOLD FUNERAL FOR SLAIN SUPREME LEADER ON JULY 4-9

Sat 13 June 2026:

Iran will hold funeral procedures for the country’s slain Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei between July 4 and July 9, Iranian state media reported on Saturday.

The program will include a farewell ceremony in the capital Tehran on July 4-5. Then, funeral ceremonies will be held in Tehran on July 6 and in Qom on July 7.

On July 9, Khamenei will be buried in the Imam Reza Shrine in the city of Mashhad following a funeral ceremony there on July 18.

Ali Khamenei was killed in US-Israeli strikes that began against Iran on Feb. 28. The attacks have also killed several senior Iranian military commanders and government officials.

A Pakistan-brokered ceasefire took effect on April 8, and efforts to reach a broader agreement have since continued.

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The US expects to sign a long-elusive agreement to end its war against Iran within the “next few days,” a senior Trump administration official said Friday.

“We do expect to be signing this agreement over the next few days. I can’t give you an exact date, and if I were to give you a confidence that we were going to be signing this agreement, I maybe would have said 75% this morning. It’s probably more like 80, 85% now,” the official told reporters on a conference call.

Negotiators are still mulling locations for a potential signing ceremony, but the official said the US wants to ensure it is in a location where both Pakistani and Qatari mediators will be represented.

Speaking about the contours of the agreement, the official said it “leads to the dismantling of the Iranian nuclear program,” as well as the US “getting the enriched material.” The agreement stipulates that the enriched uranium would be destroyed within Iran and then transferred out of the country, the official said.

Still, the official maintained that the US is open to the idea of Iran retaining a civilian nuclear program under the terms of the agreement.

“We’re not bothered at all by the idea of civilian power plants in Iran. What we’re bothered by is the type of infrastructure that would allow them to jump from civilian power generation to nuclear weapons development, and that’s what they’ve had for a very long time,” the official said.

The deal further “guarantees a long-term peace in the region, and that would mean, of course, that the Iranians are no longer funding violence in the region,” the official said. The “broad” regional peace includes Lebanon, where Israel is currently engaged in an ongoing invasion and occupation of the country’s south.

“It includes Lebanon, it includes Iran, it includes the Gulf Coast countries, and includes Israel, and we feel quite confident that all of our allies, the Israelis and the Gulf Coast coalition, will get on board,” the official said.

If Iran complies, it will be granted tiered relief from biting international sanctions.

“If they comply, they’re going to be relieved of a lot of the economic pressures that they’ve been under for many, many years, so they do get reintegrated into the world economy,” he said.

SOURCE: INDEPENDENT PRESS AND NEWS AGENCIES

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