Harith Hasan
The Ambiguities of Solidarity at Khamenei’s Funeral in Iraq
Harith Hasan’s central argument is that Ali Khamenei’s funeral in Iraq cannot be read in one simple way. It will be staged, choreographed and politically exploited by Iran and the Axis of Resistance — but it will also draw genuine grief, religious obligation and forms of solidarity that do not neatly translate into support for Tehran or its Iraqi allies.
The funeral is designed as a spectacle of power. Iran wants the procession through Iraq and Iran to show that the Islamic Republic still commands loyalty beyond its borders, especially among Shiite communities and factions tied to the Axis of Resistance. The PMF’s role in organizing the ceremonies in Najaf and Karbala, the deployment of thousands of personnel, the flags, portraits, holidays, media coverage and mass transport all form part of a carefully managed political performance.
But Hasan warns against mistaking the performance for the whole truth. Many Iraqis who attend will not be acting as loyalists of Iran’s political project. Some will come because they see Khamenei as a senior Shiite jurist, a descendant of the Prophet and a leader killed by Israel in an American-Israeli act of war. Others may be moved by Muharram’s emotional and religious atmosphere, where Khamenei’s death is folded into a longer Shiite memory of martyrdom and sacrifice.
This is where the ambiguity lies. Even Iraqis hostile to the Shiite Islamist ruling elite, including some supporters of the Tishreen protest movement, may sympathize with Iran in this moment. That sympathy does not necessarily mean support for the PMF, the Axis of Resistance or Iraq’s subordination to Tehran. It may reflect anger at Israel and the United States, or a dormant sectarian solidarity that surfaces during moments framed as existential conflict.
The position of Najaf’s senior clerics captures this complexity. Sistani’s circle showed respect and sympathy, but avoided the ideological language of the Axis. Their gestures reflected religious obligation toward a major Shiite authority killed in wartime, not full political alignment with Iran. Hasan places this within Najaf’s long effort to maintain distance from Tehran’s regional agenda while avoiding absence from a moment of deep symbolic weight.
The Axis of Resistance benefits precisely from these blurred motivations. It has long mastered the appropriation of Shiite rituals, symbols and myths, transforming religious emotion into political capital. The 2014 jihad fatwa against ISIS is one example: factions aligned with the axis used the mobilization it generated to expand military power, political influence, institutional control and access to state resources.
Hasan’s sharper point is that the axis does not survive only through ideology. It survives through adaptation: absorbing national language when useful, inventing regional vocabularies such as “West Asia,” penetrating state institutions, relying on patronage networks, and coercing critics when persuasion fails. Its power rests on both negotiation and intimidation.
Khamenei’s funeral in Iraq, then, will be neither a pure expression of popular devotion nor a hollow authoritarian ritual. It will be both: a staged political spectacle interwoven with real emotion, religious practice, social obligation, opportunism and fear.
That is why the event matters. The Axis of Resistance does not need every mourner to be a true believer. It only needs the crowd, the symbols and the ambiguity itself. In that ambiguity, Hasan argues, the axis may find enough energy to regain momentum at a moment of pressure and existential struggle.