Khamenei mourning site shut amid hardliners' rift
A mourning site set up near the place where Ali Khamenei was killed has been shut down after shroud-wearing ultra-hardliners turned it into a three-day sit-in, exposing a widening rift inside Iran’s loyalist camp over how to use the slain leader’s memory.
The site, known as Ravagh Keshvardoust, had been turned into a shrine-like space in central Tehran for prayer, mourning and ritual gatherings after Khamenei’s killing.
In Iranian religious architecture, a ravagh usually refers to a covered hall or portico attached to a shrine. In this case, the term was being used for a temporary devotional space around the site of Khamenei’s death.
According to Jamaran, a news outlet close to the family of the Islamic Republic’s founder Ruhollah Khomeini, organizers closed the site after a group of kafan-poushan, or shroud-wearers, arrived from Mashhad on Ashura (June 25) and occupied the space under the banner of “avenging the blood of the slain leader.”
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