Claim: An image from Iran’s former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s funeral shows his body laid inside a casket.
Fact: The image is AI-generated.
A day after the beginning of his public funeral proceedings, a Facebook account named Binyamin Shahzad shared a picture of the body of Iran’s slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei lying inside a casket. The caption suggested that the image is from the final viewing of the former Supreme Leader’s funeral and read:
“آیت اللہ خامنہ ای کا آخری دیدار آج ہوا۔ ان کی نمازِ جنازہ ادا کی گئی اور آخری رسومات بھی انجام دی گئیں، جن میں لاکھوں بلکہ کروڑوں افراد نے شرکت کی۔ ان کے جسدِ خاکی کو سرد خانے میں محفوظ رکھا گیا تھا۔اے مجاھد اللہ پاک آپ کے درجات بلند فرماۓ آمین“
[Translation: “The final viewing of Ayatollah Khamenei took place today. His funeral prayers were offered and the last rites were performed, attended by hundreds of thousands—indeed, millions—of people. His mortal remains had been kept in a mortuary. O Mujahid, may Allah Almighty elevate your station; Ameen.”]
Former Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s funeral
On 9 July 2026, Iran’s slain Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was laid to rest in his birthplace of Mashhad at the Shrine of Imam Reza, a place of great religious significance to the Shia community.
The burial took place more than four months after Khamenei was killed by a US-Israeli airstrike which targeted his bunker in Tehran on 28 February 2026 along with his other family members, including his granddaughter, son-in-law, daughter and daughter-in-law. Their coffins first marked a journey from Tehran to the city of Qom on 7 July.
Later, the procession arrived in Najaf, Iraq on the same day where it was carried to the mausoleum of Imam Ali and then flown to the city of Karbala where it was driven through the mausoleum of Imam Hussein. Both the shrines hold extreme importance to the Shia community. The coffins were then flown back to Mashhad, Iran, where the final rites took place and the six-day public mourning came to an end.
According to Al Jazeera, the burial ceremony drew out a huge crowd of more than 15 million people. However, Khamenei’s son and his successor as Supreme Leader, Mojtaba, remained apparently absent and has not been seen in public since he was reportedly injured in the same strike on 28 February.
Fact or Fiction?
Since the image shows Khamenei’s face very clearly, Soch Fact Check looked through credible publications, like Reuters, Al Jazeera, and Getty Images for footage and pictures from his funeral procession. None had posted any images of his final viewing or his dead body and all images were of a closed casket.
Pictures showing Ayatollah Khamenei’s closed casket from his funeral procession on 9 July in Masshad, Iran. Source: Getty Images.
In the original images, Khamenei’s turban is seen sitting on the top of his casket whereas the image under investigation shows him wearing it. Moreover, original pictures show that the casket is shrouded in the Iranian flag; they do not show the casket underneath, or whether it is made of glass or any other see-through material.
The image in the claim also appears artificial as it shows Khamenei adorned in his robe, glasses,and rings on his fingers, which are placed too perfectly.
Khamenei’s turban, glasses and rings placed on his body
Therefore, suspecting that the image may be AI-generated, Soch Fact Check first ran it through Hive Moderation’s AI-Generated Content Detection tool, which concluded that the image is “99%” likely to be AI-generated.
Result by Hive Moderation
We also ran the image through a tool designed by OpenAI to check if it was created using the American artificial intelligence company’s tools. It confirmed that the picture had been “generated using OpenAI tools,” as it “found a SynthID watermark that originated from OpenAI.”
Result by OpenAI
The strong verdicts from AI detection tools and the absence of official, credible visuals showing Khamenei’s body from the funeral proceedings confirms that the image in the claim is AI-generated.
Virality
Soch Fact Check first came across a viral post on Facebook with as many as 1,100 likes and 71 reshares. It was shared by other accounts on the platform, with one post garnering 609 likes separately.
Conclusion: The image of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s dead body laying inside a casket is AI-generated.
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