Iranian authorities are preparing for the possibility that Ali Khamenei’s week-long funeral ceremonies could leave between 1,500 and 3,000 people dead, Germany’s WELT reported, citing a classified document and municipal sources in Tehran.
The report, written from Tehran by an anonymous author whose identity is known to WELT’s editors, said officials have drawn up contingency plans for a possible mass-casualty disaster during the processions for the slain former Supreme Leader.
According to WELT, a classified letter from the Iranian Red Crescent and the national crisis management organization to First Vice President Mohammad-Reza Aref projected between 1,500 and 3,000 possible deaths.
The report said a special unit had been set up to handle the dead and missing, while thousands of new graves had been prepared at Tehran’s Behesht-e Zahra cemetery.
One Tehran municipality employee, identified under a pseudonym for security reasons, told WELT that colleagues in the city’s crisis headquarters had confirmed the preparations.
“The prepared graves really exist,” she was quoted as saying. “Those responsible were told that up to 3,000 dead would be okay. With such a large crowd and this extreme heat, no one knows what will happen.”
The claims have not been independently confirmed.
Khamenei’s funeral ceremonies began in Tehran on Saturday and are expected to continue through Qom, the Iraqi cities of Najaf and Karbala, and finally Mashhad, where he is due to be buried on Thursday.
WELT said the authorities were planning a sweeping security and logistical operation in Tehran, including movement restrictions, possible disruption to air travel, thousands of buses, temporary kitchens and the use of schools and mosques to house participants.
The report said officials had spoken of as many as 20 million people attending, a figure that is difficult to verify and is often used by Iranian authorities to portray state ceremonies as displays of mass support.
According to WELT, Tehran Municipality, led by hardline mayor Alireza Zakani, is playing a central role in the preparations, deploying 11,000 buses and keeping metro and bus rapid transit lines free and operating around the clock.
Municipal employees told the newspaper that each Tehran district had been allocated the equivalent of around 500,000 to 650,000 euros for the three days of ceremonies, excluding additional funds for bodies such as the fire department, parks organization, transport authorities and construction units.
Government-linked journalists cited by WELT estimated the budget at about 15 million euros for Tehran alone, with another five million euros each for Qom and Mashhad. With ceremonies also planned in Najaf and Karbala, the report said the funeral could become one of the most expensive state burials in modern history.
The scale of the preparations has raised concern because Iran has a recent history of deadly funeral crushes. At least 56 people were killed and more than 200 injured during the 2020 funeral for IRGC commander Qasem Soleimani in Kerman, while Ruhollah Khomeini’s 1989 funeral also descended into chaos, leaving at least eight people dead and hundreds injured.
WELT also described deep political tension around the ceremonies, saying radical supporters of the Islamic Republic have used nightly gatherings to denounce the US-Iran memorandum and threaten senior officials involved in negotiations, including Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi and Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf.
Some participants have demanded continued war to avenge Khamenei’s killing, while videos circulating online showed hardline religious speakers making militant speeches, with some attendees carrying rifles.
The funeral is taking place during a fragile ceasefire and amid growing public frustration over the cost of the ceremonies, economic hardship and the government’s mobilization of state resources for political display.
This time, Taghi Changalvaei was one of those who went.
He entered the fire to help save Khayiz, a protected area in the southern Zagros near Behbahan, in Khuzestan province. He did not return.
For Zagros communities, his death was familiar. For years, local residents and environmental volunteers have been losing friends and relatives to fires that return each summer across the mountains.
Iranian media have reported that since 2020, 27 people have died while trying to control fires in the Zagros.
Most were not professional firefighters. They had no specialized training, no protective clothing and little more than improvised tools.
They went because the forests were burning, and because in many parts of the Zagros, people know that if they do not move first, help may arrive too late.
A landscape primed to burn
The Zagros Mountains run for about 1,600 kilometers, from northwestern Iran toward the Persian Gulf. Their oak woodlands cover almost six million hectares, roughly 40 percent of Iran’s forest area, and support millions of rural livelihoods while helping regulate water and prevent soil erosion.
The Persian oak defines this landscape, shaping village economies, water systems and grazing patterns. But the Zagros oak belt has been shrinking for decades under pressure from illegal logging, overgrazing, drought, climate change and poor management.
Each summer, fire turns that decline into an emergency. That pattern was visible again in Khayiz, where a blaze that began on Badil Mountain burned for days through protected forests near Behbahan, exposing shortages of aerial firefighting capacity.
Experts say the fires have become larger, harder to contain and more closely tied to climate stress, fuel buildup and weak management.
Winter and spring rains can cover the slopes with grasses and seasonal plants. By early summer, heat dries that vegetation into fuel load: the combustible layer that lets a spark, a cigarette butt, a campfire or an intentional blaze spread quickly.
One part of the debate concerns grazing. In the past, livestock consumed part of the seasonal vegetation that now dries out in the mountains. From around 2021, authorities pursued efforts to reduce grazing pressure more seriously to help forests and pastures recover from overuse.
The aim was environmental protection: overgrazing has long damaged Zagros forests, limiting natural regeneration and weakening young oak growth. But some experts argue that reducing livestock presence without alternative vegetation management may have left more dry grass and brush by summer.
That does not make grazing restrictions the cause of the fires. Climate change, drought, oak decline, human negligence, arson, weak fire roads, aircraft shortages, poor coordination and lack of equipment all remain central. Unmanaged vegetation, some experts say, may be one piece of a larger puzzle.
In parts of Spain and the western United States, targeted grazing is used to reduce wildfire fuel loads and maintain firebreaks. For the Zagros, the question is whether the state can protect forests without removing one form of vegetation control and failing to replace it with another.
Bigger fires, weaker capacity
The statistics point to a worsening burden. In the Iranian year that began in March 2021, about 21,000 hectares of forests across the country burned, according to figures cited in Iranian media. By the year that began in March 2024, that figure had risen to about 27,000 hectares.
By November 2025, Iran had recorded more than 2,300 fires across national land, forests and rangelands, burning about 46,000 hectares. A recent study of the southern Zagros recorded more than 13,000 fire events from 2000 to 2023, with a sharp increase in the most recent years covered by the study.
The year that began in March 2026 has opened with another wave of fires, from Khayiz and Mongasht to the highlands of Lorestan, Fars and Kordestan provinces. Mongasht, a long mountain massif between Khuzestan and Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari, is one of several rugged areas where local residents are often the first responders.
The financial picture has also worsened. On paper, the rial budget of Iran’s Natural Resources and Watershed Management Organization has increased. But once the collapse in the value of Iran’s currency is taken into account, its real resources appear to have fallen sharply.
Calculations based on budget figures cited in Iranian media and market exchange rates suggest the organization’s dollar-denominated budget dropped from roughly $94 million in the Iranian year that began in March 2021 to about $41 million in the year that began in March 2026. Compared with the year that began in March 2016, the decline is estimated at more than 60 percent.
The direction is clear: while the fires have grown, the state’s real capacity to fight them has shrunk.
The consequences are visible on the ground. The fire in Khayiz is now out. But for Changalvaei‘s family, and for the families of others who died trying to save the Zagros, the fire has not ended.
Without changes in policy, funding and firefighting capacity, next summer will bring the same scene again: men with shovels, branches and bottles of water climbing toward the smoke, while fire moves through the oaks and leaves behind ash and names.
