Bihar Governor Lieutenant General (Retd) Syed Ata Hasnain and Minister of State for External Affairs Pabitra Margherita will represent India at the state funeral of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Iran next month, sources said on Monday.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian invited Prime Minister Narendra Modi to attend the funeral ceremonies, scheduled from July 4 to 9. The Prime Minister is unlikely to attend, given his scheduled visit to Indonesia, Australia, and New Zealand from July 6 to 11.
Khamenei was assassinated on February 28 in a joint US-Israeli airstrike on Tehran.
In 2024, then Vice President Jagdeep Dhankhar represented India at the funerals of Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who were killed in a helicopter crash.
During the conflict in West Asia, New Delhi and Tehran maintained contact. Modi and Pezeshkian held telephonic conversations on a couple of occasions, and the two foreign ministers, S Jaishankar and Syed Abbas Araghchi, spoke to each other at least six times. Araghchi was in New Delhi in May to attend the BRICS foreign ministers’ meeting.
The Prime Minister last visited Iran in 2016, while the then Iranian President Hassan Rouhani visited India in February 2018. Modi and Pezeshkian met in Kazan, Russia, in October 2024 on the sidelines of the BRICS Summit.
