The United Arab Emirates and Kuwait — both of which came under heavy Iranian fire during the recent war — skipped the funeral proceedings for late Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, while representatives from Qatar, Saudi Arabia, India, China and Turkey traveled to the Islamic Republic to attend the ceremonies for Khamenei, who was killed in Tehran at the outset of the war at the end of February.

The event began on Friday and spans five cities across Iran and Iraq, ending in the Iranian city of Mashhad, where he will be buried Thursday.

Despite his three brothers’ attendance at the funeral proceedings, Mojtaba Khamenei, who succeeded his father as supreme leader and is thought to be seriously injured from the same airstrike, still has not appeared publicly.

IRGC Commander Ahmad Vahidi made his own first public appearance since the war began, sitting beside Khamenei’s casket on Thursday before the funeral began. Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, estranged from Khamenei for years, made a rare public appearance at the procession.

President Donald Trump noted on Monday that the gathering would be an opportune time to take out Iran’s remaining leadership. “They are all there,” the president told Axios. “One shot and we can take them all out, but we are not going to do that because then we would have nobody to negotiate with.” Talks between the U.S. and Iran are expected to resume after the funeral ends later this week. 

Though Lebanon sent Lebanese Defense Minister Michel Menassa, a delegation from Iranian proxy Hezbollah also traveled to Iran for the ceremonies.

Hamas, meanwhile, said in a statement that its delegation was led by the head of its political bureau, Mohammed Darwish, and included other bureau members such as Bassem Naim.

Also attending Saturday’s ceremonies in Tehran were Ziyad al-Nakhalah, the leader of the Palestinian Islamic Jihad, and senior Houthi member Dhaif Allah al-Shami, state TV reported. Russia sent former President Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy chairman of the security council, as a special envoy of President Vladimir Putin.

Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif, a key mediator between Washington and Tehran, was one of the few sitting heads of government to attend in person. “The late supreme leader’s wisdom, leadership and profound influence on Iran and the wider region will be remembered for generations,” Sharif said, per his office. 

Majed al-Ansari, a Qatari Foreign Ministry spokesman and advisor to the prime minister, praised Palestinian suicide bombings and rocket attacks on Israeli civilian centers in social media and blog posts prior to taking up his post in 2022.

Al-Ansari is one of the Qatari government’s most public faces, hosting regular press briefings and giving interviews about the Gulf state, including to Israeli media. 

In May 2021, when Palestinian Islamic Jihad launched 130 rockets at Israel, Al-Ansari posted his support on X, saying that “Palestine emerges to remind this nation of its glory and the greatness of its message.” Al-Ansari added the hashtag #Tel_Aviv_is_burning to his post.

During the ensuing 11 days of fighting between Israel and Palestinian terrorists in Gaza and the West Bank, and rioting by Israeli Arabs in mixed Jewish-Arab cities in Israel, Al-Ansari posted: “Jerusalem, the interior [of Israel], the West Bank, Gaza … rise with one voice against the occupier. This unity is what terrifies the enemy the most. Oh Allah, unite their word and guide their aim.” 

The posts were resurfaced by analyst Eitan Fischberger.

Al-Ansari also maintained a blog, which he linked to on his verified X account. 

In one blog post, Al-Ansari praised the Second Intifada — the 2000-2005 Palestinian terror campaign — against the “Zionist enemy” and its “martyrdom operations,” a euphemism for terrorist attacks. He credited the intifada with leading Israel to pull out of Gaza in 2005. 

In an overview of Palestinian terrorism against Israelis in recent decades, Al-Ansari argued that “the Israeli military losses were great, but the most important loss was Tel Aviv’s loss of a large part of its narrative and story of its victimhood in the West, following the spread of images of the brutal aggression throughout the world.” 

Al-Ansari encouraged “a celebration of the continued march toward victory in the conflict,” praising what he described as the Palestinians’ advancement from “resistance with stones and bare chests [to] the launching of 3,000 rockets in ten days toward the entity’s [Israel’s] cities.” 

In another blog post, in which Al-Ansari wrote about the Israeli Arab riots in May 2021, which included burning down Jewish-owned businesses and a synagogue, he falsely claimed that “the occupation forces were forced to withdraw” from Lod — a central Israeli city in which Ben Gurion Airport continued to operate normally and most neighborhoods continued to function peacefully. 

The blog and X posts were written when Al-Ansari was the head of the Qatar International Academy for Security Studies. The blog was deleted after Jewish Insider sent a request for comment about the matter to the Qatari Embassy, which the embassy did not respond to.

In earlier posts on an unverified Facebook account under Al-Ansari’s name, the Qatari spokesman repeatedly called President Donald Trump a racist.

In 2015, during Trump’s first presidential campaign, Al-Ansari wrote, “We call on the board of directors of Qatar Airways to cut ties with Trump and his racist empire.” Also that year, he lamented that the head of Qatar Airways “brags about his friendship with this racist.”