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Iran on Thursday warned the US and Israel against any attack against the country as it prepares for the state funeral of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in an Israeli strikes on the first day of the war. Funeral commemorations begin on July 4 in Tehran and conclude on July 9 in Khamenei’s hometown of Mashhad. Read our blog to see how the day’s events unfolded.
Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei did not attend a funeral ceremony for his late wife, Zahra Hadad-Adel, held in Tehran on Wednesday, Iranian news outlet IranWire has said.
Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen in public or in any recent photographs since he was elected leader shortly after the death of his father, former supreme leader Ali Khamenei, in February.
Since then rumours have circulated that Mojtaba was injured in the US-Israeli strikes that killed his father and wife.
The New York Times says that US officials believed Israel may have been planning to kill Iranian negotiators while they were engaged in talks with Washington this spring.
The US believed that two senior Iranians were particular targets – Abbas Araghchi, Iran’s foreign minister, and Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, the speaker of parliament.
Some official sources said the US “went so far as to ask other countries in the region to warn Iran about the possibility Israel could target the two officials”, the newspaper said.
Israeli drone strikes on Thursday targeted the south Lebanon city of Nabatieh, local media said.
Two drones hit a car in the municipality of Nabatiyé el-Faouka, near Ghandour Hospital, according to Lebanese news outlet L’Orient Le Jour.
FRANCE 24’s Noga Tarnopolsky reports from Jerusalem.
A Kurdish opposition group has said that six of its fighters were killed in clashes with the Revolutionary Guards in western Iran near the border with Iraqi Kurdistan.
“Six Peshmerga were martyred” in fighting on Wednesday night near the village of Qazqapan, three kilometres from the city of Piranshahr, the Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) said on X.
The PDKI is one of several Kurdish rebel groups that have camps and bases in Iraq’s autonomous Kurdistan region and maintain a clandestine presence in Kurdish-majority western Iran, including Piranshahr.
During the Middle East war, Iran repeatedly struck those groups, including the PDKI, inside Iraqi Kurdistan.
Iran designates the groups as terrorist organisations and accuses them of serving Western or Israeli interests.
Preparations are underway in Tehran for a vast funeral for the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, which will begin on Saturday.
Authorities expect between 15 and 20 million people to participate in a memorial in Tehran – where the former leader will lie in state for three days – as well as other events around the country.
Massive portraits of the late supreme leader have been hung across the capital city along with some of his most famous quotes and black flags of mourning and red ones symbolising martyrdom and vengeance.
© Reuters
Israelis called on Thursday for a state commission of inquiry into Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack, as the country marked 1,000 days since the deadliest event in its history – which triggered the war in Gaza – with a series of commemorations and protests.
According to polls, a large number of Israelis across the political spectrum support the establishment of a body to determine who is responsible for the authorities’ failure to prevent the October 7 attack.
Netanyahu’s government, however, has long refused to establish such a commission, the likes of which Israel has commonly set up in the past to investigate major state-level failings.
A protestor wears a mask depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in Jerusalem on July 2, 2026. ©Ohad Zwigenberg, AP
The “October Council”, founded by the families of victims and hostages taken on October 7, is one of the main organisers of Thursday’s events.
Gatherings are scheduled in front of the Israeli parliament and near the homes of government members.
“The families of the hostages and the bereaved families are demanding the establishment of a state commission of inquiry now!” the October Council said on X.
Oil prices fell nearly 2% to a four-month low on Thursday as concerns over supply disruptions eased after Qatar said Iran and the U.S. had made progress in talks over the Strait of Hormuz.
Brent futures were 91 cents, or 1.3% lower, at $70.66 a barrel at 1316 GMT, while U.S. West Texas Intermediate crude fell $1.04, or 1.5%, to $67.54 a barrel.
Both marked on Thursday their lowest levels since late February, just before the US-Israeli war on Iran began.
The talks made “positive progress” on matters related to the memorandum that halted the war in June, a Qatar Foreign Ministry spokesperson said in a post on X, though there was no sign the two sides made headway towards a lasting peace.
The next meeting between Iran and US negotiators will take place after July 9 funeral processions for Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Qatar ministry added.
Mourners carried the coffin of Zahra Haddad-Adel, the late wife of Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, at her funeral in Tehran on Thursday.
According to Iranian authorities Haddad-Adel was killed in the same US-Israeli strike that killed then-Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. His public funeral will be held in the Iranian capital on Saturday.
© Fars News Agency via AP
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had killed five members of the banned Democratic Party of Iranian Kurdistan (PDKI) in the country’s northwest, state media has reported, amid heightened tensions between Tehran and Kurdish militant groups.
The Guards said the group was ambushed after entering Iranian territory in mountainous border areas near Piranshahr in West Azerbaijan province, without specifying when the operation took place.
According to the Norway-based Kurdish rights group Hengaw, the clashes took place on Wednesday evening.
The PDKI has been involved in decades of intermittent conflict with the Islamic Republic, and Kurdish armed groups in Iran have long been viewed by Tehran as separatist threats.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun defended on Thursday negotiations with Israel, saying they were not a betrayal and he would not surrender “a single inch of Lebanon’s territory”, according to the presidency.
sraeli Defence Minister Israel Katz said on Wednesday that the Israeli army would remain “until further notice” in what it describes as “security zones” in Lebanon, Syria and the Gaza Strip.
India will send its deputy foreign minister and a state governor to represent the country at the state funeral of Iran’s former leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
Governor of Bihar, Syed Ata Hasnain, and deputy foreign minister Pabitra Margherita will visit Iran on July 3, the Indian foreign ministry said in a statement.
“The high-level representation in the ceremony underscores the importance of civilizational ties, including people-to-people connection, between the two countries, providing a robust foundation to political and economic engagements,” it said.
Hong Kong’s flagship airline Cathay Pacific announced Thursday that it will resume flights to the Middle East, as the United States and Iran signal that efforts to end the war remain viable.
Following the two sides’ indirect discussions in Doha on Wednesday, US President Donald Trump, as well as mediators Qatar and Pakistan, offered signs that diplomacy was holding, despite exchanges of fire this week.
Cathay suspended flights to Dubai and Riyadh at the end of February after the war broke out.
The airline has raised fuel surcharges several times as the conflict has driven up oil prices.
It said Thursday it would resume daily passenger flights to Dubai and four-times weekly passenger flights to Riyadh from September 1.
Freighter services to Riyadh will resume from August 1.
“Cathay will continue to closely monitor the evolving situation in the Middle East prior to the resumption dates,” the company said.
Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani met Lebanese parliament speaker Nabih Berri, a Hezbollah ally, during a visit to Beirut.
Shaibani’s visit to Lebanon comes as Damascus has insisted it does not want to intervene militarily in Lebanon, despite pressure from the US.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly said that Syria could “take care of Hezbollah”, criticising Israel’s strategy in its war with the Iran-backed militant group.
But Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa, who came to power in December 2024 after leading a coalition that toppled longtime ruler Bashar al-Assad, has stated that he has no intention of intervening or reopening old wounds.
The Syrian minister, on his second visit to Lebanon, was received on arrival by Lebanese President Joseph Aoun, before going on to meet Berri, according to local media.
Iran’s chief negotiator Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has called for a massive turnout at Ali Khamenei’s funeral to avenge the supreme leader’s death in US-Israeli strikes at the start of the war.
“I invite all the Iranian people … to write a glorious page in the history of Islamic Iran through your presence” at the funeral ceremonies starting Saturday, said Ghalibaf, who is also Iran’s parliament speaker.
“The nation’s call for vengeance must ring in the ears of the whole world,” he added in a statement.
Pakistani Prime Minister Shehbaz Sharif will attend the state funeral of Iran’s former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, according to Pakistan’s foreign ministry.
China’s foreign ministry has said senior lawmaker He Wei will attend Khamenei’s funeral in Tehran. He is the vice chairman of China’s top lawmaking body, the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress.
(FRANCE 24 with Reuters, AP and AFP)
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