A towering, LEGO-style effigy of the US President Donald Trump was set on fire by mourners in the Iranian holy city of Mashhad on Thursday, capping a dayslong funeral procession for slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei with a fiery public display of anger toward the United States.
Footage circulated on social media showed the giant, blocky likeness of Trump suspended from a crane before a crowd of mourners approached carrying burning sticks, quickly engulfing the figure in flames as onlookers chanted slogans.
The burning marked the culmination of a week of nationwide mourning that saw Khamenei, 86, laid to rest at the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad, his hometown, alongside four family members killed alongside him.
Khamenei was killed on February 28, the opening day of joint US-Israeli strikes that launched the war between Iran and the two countries, and the funeral proceedings that followed have repeatedly turned into public venting grounds for Iranian fury over his death, directed squarely at Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Days of Chants, Effigies and Stoned Portraits
The burning was only the latest and most dramatic in a string of anti-Trump displays that unfolded across the week-long mourning period. During Monday’s massive procession through Tehran, mourners hung another effigy of Trump along the route and chanted for his death and Netanyahu’s, as flag-draped coffins were carried through the capital on a truck built to resemble the ornamental grating surrounding a revered Iranian shrine.
State-linked media reported that a separate image of Trump, placed on a bridge along the procession route, was pelted with stones by the crowd. One widely photographed sign carried by a mourner read simply, “There will be blood.” A member of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps told NBC News at the procession that the war would not be “over for us” until Khamenei’s death was avenged.
Authorities appeared conscious of the historical weight and physical risk of the gathering, urging mourners over loudspeakers to walk slowly and avoid pushing, in an apparent effort to prevent a repeat of the deadly crush that marred the 1989 funeral of Khamenei’s predecessor, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which drew an estimated 10 million mourners.
A Funeral Doubling as a Display of Regime Strength
Iranian authorities appeared eager to use the scale of the mourning to project continuity and control, following months of war with the US and Israel and a deadly domestic crackdown on protesters earlier this year.
Streets and national airspace were shut down for the duration of the mourning period, which began the previous Saturday and stretched through stops in Tehran, Qom, and sites in neighbouring Iraq before concluding in Mashhad.
Notably absent throughout the proceedings was Khamenei’s son and named successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not appeared publicly or issued any audio statement since the war began.
According to three people with knowledge of the matter cited by NBC News, Mojtaba was severely injured in the same strike that killed his father, suffering burns and leg wounds requiring multiple operations, though a senior Iranian official described his condition as “not very serious.”
Former Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad was seen attending the funeral, resurfacing after months out of public view, while the burial prayer for Khamenei was ultimately led by 101-year-old hardline cleric Hossein Nouri Hamedani.
Talks on Hold as Grief Turns to Vows of Revenge
The funeral proceedings have paused delicate diplomatic contacts between Washington and Tehran, with officials reportedly eyeing Islamabad, Pakistan, as a possible venue for a fresh round of negotiations once mourning concludes.
Trump, for his part, pushed back on suggestions that Iran had gained the upper hand militarily during the conflict, telling reporters in the Oval Office that the United States had “eviscerated” Iran’s forces even if the scale of that success had not been fully reflected in media coverage.
Netanyahu, meanwhile, moved to downplay any suggestion of a rift with Trump over how aggressively to continue the campaign against Iran, telling reporters that disagreements between the allies were handled directly and that “America has no greater ally than Israel.”
A Symbol With a History, Now Aimed at Washington
Thursday’s burning effigy echoes a form of political protest with prior precedent even in the West, most notably the inflatable “Baby Trump” balloon that first appeared during demonstrations in London ahead of Trump’s 2019 state visit during his first term.
In Mashhad, however, the LEGO-style figure served a starkly different purpose: a visceral, televised expression of grief and fury from a country whose supreme leader was killed in an American-led strike just months earlier.
As the funeral concludes and Iran’s leadership transition remains clouded by uncertainty over Mojtaba Khamenei’s health and public silence, the burning of Trump’s effigy stands as one of the starkest images yet of how personal, and how public, Iranian anger toward the American president has become in the aftermath of the war’s opening strikes.
