Pakistan's leadership attends Khamenei’s funeral as Tehran ties deepen

ISLAMABAD: Pakistan Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif landed in Iran on Friday to attend the funeral of assassinated Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei along with Field Marshal Asim Munir and Foreign Minister Ishaq Dar.

Pakistan’s Foreign Office confirmed that PM Sharif’s single-day visit will include paying condolences and participating in the funeral rites of the late Khamenei. 

Khamenei's casket was placed at Tehran's Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla for people to pay their respects on Friday. It will move to Qom on Monday, then to Najaf and Karbala in Iraq, before burial at Mashhad's Imam Reza Shrine on July 9, according to their local media.

Iran's Foreign Ministry said that roughly 100 countries sent their delegations, including Russia's Dmitry Medvedev and senior Chinese lawmaker He Wei. Officials project turnout as high as 20 million.

Islamabad-Tehran ties

Pakistan's presence at the highest level reflects a relationship reshaped by the recent war, which has brought both neighbors much closer. 

After Israel and the US attacked Iran, killing the supreme leader, Iran launched a series of attacks on Israel and American bases in the middle east, escalating the entire region into the conflict.

It was Islamabad that brokered the April 8 ceasefire between Washington and Tehran, halting the fighting. 

The ceasefire then resulted in the Islamabad Talks, where high-level delegations from both sides travelled to Pakistan on the 10 and 11 April and tried to diplomatically settle the dispute.

Although the talks failed but a ceasefire was maintained which was finally followed by the Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding signed by Washington and Tehran on June 17, that completely put an end to the hostilities and allowed both parties to create a new deal.

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi thanked PM Sharif and CDF Munir by name in a statement on April 8, crediting and appreciating them "for their tireless efforts to end the war in the region." He said Iran accepted the truce at Sharif's request, and the relationship has only grown closer since then.

Bilateral trade

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian made Tehran's gratitude personal on June 23 when he travelled to Islamabad on his first foreign trip since the war began, where he met the Pakistani leadership and held bilateral meetings with many of them.

Speaking alongside Sharif in Islamabad, he said, "Pakistan and Iran are one soul, not just neighbors, but brothers." He thanked Pakistan and its people for promoting peace and stability in the region.

The visit was more than symbolism. Pakistan's Foreign Office said the next day that progress on economic projects, including a long-delayed gas pipeline, would move in step with sanctions relief on Tehran.

Islamabad also pushed to lift bilateral trade to $10 billion annually, up from roughly $3 billion. Foreign Office Spokesperson Tahir Andrabi said Iran had "reaffirmed their trust in us, for which we are grateful."

While the visit did not produce any deals, the 60-day window under the Islamabad MoU, includes phased sanctions relief and a partial reopening of Iran's oil exports. 

Regime change

The war itself began with decapitation strikes on February 28, killing Khamenei and senior commanders within hours. Washington initially framed the campaign around regime change, with Trump urging Iranians to rise up against their government.

That outcome was not achieved. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, speaking in Bahrain last month, said "the Iranian system is led by clerics, radical clerics," rejecting the idea that Tehran's leadership had fundamentally shifted.

Mojtaba Khamenei, the late leader's son, was confirmed as his successor on March 8. He has not appeared publicly since being wounded in the February strike and will skip his father's funeral over security concerns.

For Tehran, the ceremony doubles as a show of resilience to adversaries and domestic critics alike. For Islamabad, it is another marker of a mediator role it has spent five months building, and one it shows no sign of stepping back from.