Photos of Iranians flooding the streets for Soleimani's funeral show how much he was revered, and hints at how hard the regime will strike back
- Top Iranian military commander Qassem Soleimani will be buried in his hometown of Kerman this week after a three-day, multi-city funeral procession after his assassination by US drone.
- More than a million people flooded the streets across four cities, with crowding getting so bad that 35 people died in a stampede on Tuesday.
- Top Iranian leaders including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and President Hassan Rouhani also publicly paid their respects.
- The grandeur of Soleimani's funeral highlights his hero status in the country, and gives a glimpse of how hard Iran is willing to strike back against the US.
- On Tuesday Ali Shamkhani, Iran's security chief, said the country had drawn up 13 options for retaliation against the US, and even the weakest one would be a "historic nightmare."
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Funeral processions for Iran's assassinated military commander Qassem Soleimani entered their third and final day on Tuesday, with more than a million people flooding the streets of his hometown to pay their respects.
The body of Soleimani, who was killed by a US drone in Baghdad last Friday, was flown via passenger jet into Iran earlier this week, and paraded through the streets of multiple major cities including Tehran, Qom, Mashhad, and Ahvaz.
Soleimani will be buried in Kerman, his hometown. The exact time of his burial is not yet clear.
This is the first time Iran has honored an individual with a multi-city funeral since the death of the Islamic Republic founder Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989, according to the Associated Press (AP).
Top Iranian leaders - including the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, President Hassan Rouhani, and the head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps - also appeared in public to mourn Soleimani's death.
As the funeral procession waded through various crowds, black-clad mourners edged as close as they could to Soleimani's coffin to show their respects.
The procession in Tehran alone drew in more than one million people, the AP reported, and many mourners across cities chanted "Death to America," an often used refrain by anti-US Iranians.
The jostling was so bad that some 35 people died in a stampede at the Kerman funeral procession on Tuesday, the AP reported, citing Iranian state TV. Many more were injured, the AP added.
All this shows how highly revered Soleimani was among Iranians, and could hint at how hard the Iranian government is willing to strike back against the US to avenge his death.
Iran's leaders have vowed to avenge Soleimani's death, and inflict pain and destruction on the US.
Ayatollah Khamenei also wept four times while giving Muslim funeral prayers beside Soleimani's body at Tehran University on Sunday.
He was joined by Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, who warned the US had made a "grave mistake," and Soleimani's successor Brig. Gen. Esmail Ghaani, who on Monday publicly vowed to carry out an "uprooting" of "the US from the region."
On Tuesday Ali Shamkhani, Iran's security chief, said the regime has discussed 13 "scenarios for vengeance" for the US, the state-run Fars news agency reported, according to BBC Monitoring and Bloomberg.
Even the weakest one would be a "historic nightmare" for the US, Shamkhani said.
Though the "scenarios" are unclear, the regime could attack US military operations around the region, unleash cyberwarriors to target banks and devastate US power networks, or carry out terror attacks on US soil.
On Tuesday Hossein Salami, the head of Iran's Revolutionary Guards, told mourners: "We will take revenge, a hard and definitive revenge," according to Reuters.
"The martyr Qassem Soleimani is more dangerous to the enemy than Qassem Soleimani," Salami added, noting that the Iranian retaliation against the US would be a time and place of its own choosing.
"We will burn the places they love," Salami added, according to translations from BBC Monitoring.
Maj. Gen. Hossein Dehghan, who advises the Supreme Leader, also told CNN in an interview broadcast Sunday that Iran's response to the US will "for sure will be military and against military sites."
He added that if President Donald Trump goes on with his threat to destroy Iranian cultural sites, "No American military staff, no American political center, no American military base, no American vessel will be safe."
A eulogist in Mashhad on Sunday also told mourners that anyone who assassinates Trump - who directed the strike on Soleimani - should receive an $80 million bounty.
It's not clear if this call was sanctioned by the Iranian government.
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