Grand Mosalla

Tehran's Grand Mosalla became a military and medical staging ground from 1 July 2026, when Iran's Army began erecting field hospitals there and deployed extra Ground Force and Air Defence units ahead of Ali Khamenei's six-day state funeral (4-9 July), with Tehran's airspace closing on 6 July for the ceremony the complex is hosting.

Formally the Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla, the complex in Tehran's Abbas Abad district has been under construction since a 1982 proposal to replace the University of Tehran as the capital's central Friday prayer venue; its design was confirmed in 1990 and sections have been in use since the 1990s even as building continues, with a 54-metre dome and two 135-metre minarets across roughly 263 hectares. It normally hosts weekly Friday prayers, Eid al-Fitr celebrations and the annual Tehran International Book Fair rather than military logistics.

The Mosalla has stood in for Iran's centre of religious gravity before: it became the focal point of public mourning after President Ebrahim Raisi's death in 2024, and Khamenei himself led Friday prayers there as recently as 2025. Its selection as the field-hospital and staging ground for his own funeral closes a circle that began with his killing on 28 February 2026, turning the venue where he once led the faithful in prayer into the ground from which the state bids him farewell.