The ceremonies offer Iran an opportunity to project resilience after five weeks of war with the United States and Israel, while attention remains focused on Khamenei's successor, his son Mojtaba Khamenei, who has not appeared in public since taking power.

After lying in state for two days at Tehran's Grand Mosalla religious complex, the body of Khamenei -- who was killed on the first day of the Middle East war on February 28 -- began its journey through the capital accompanied by massive crowds of mourners, state broadcaster IRIB reported.

Mourners gathered in Imam Hussein Square in eastern Tehran and hanged an effigy of US President Donald Trump, according to state media.

Authorities are hoping to avoid a repeat of the chaos that marred the 1989 funeral of Khamenei's predecessor Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, which drew an estimated 10 million people, according to state news agency IRNA.

Crowd surges in Khomeini's funeral killed more than 10 people and injured over 10,000.

Thousands had filled the Grand Mosalla on Sunday to pay their respects to Khamenei and his four family members, all killed on February 28 in Israeli airstrikes based on US intelligence.

Massive concrete walls separated the public from the coffin to prevent stampedes.

It is unclear what level of access and proximity the public will have during the procession, but authorities are mindful that in 1989 they were forced to use a helicopter to transport Khomeini for burial after mourners stormed his vehicle, causing his burial shroud to tear and his body to fall to the ground.

As well as laying Khamenei -- who ruled the Islamic republic for more than three-and-a-half decades -- to rest, the funerals are a chance for Iran's authorities to burnish their resilience after five weeks at war with Israel and the United States.

Three sons of Khamenei prayed beside his coffin and those of four other family members on Sunday, but Mojtaba, the son who succeeded him as Iran's supreme leader, did not make an appearance.

State TV showed Mostafa, Meysam and Masoud Khamenei praying behind the coffins laid out in the vast courtyard of Tehran's Imam Khomeini Grand Mosalla, a sprawling religious complex.

Their father, alongside several other members of the family, was killed in an airstrike when the United States and Israel launched a war on Iran on February 28. 

The conflict, which raged for several weeks before the sides reached a shaky ceasefire, has caused death and destruction across the region and left Iran's theocratic government, backed by the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, in power.

During the war, more than 3,000 people were killed, including many of Iran's most senior politicians and military commanders. Military bases and major infrastructure projects were destroyed causing billions of dollars in damage.

But Iran successfully struck US bases in the region, inflicted pain on the Gulf Arab countries that host them, and asserted its control of the Strait of Hormuz, causing a spike in global energy prices, which President Trump said led him to push faster for peace.

The interim deal reached last month includes the unfreezing of billions of dollars in Iranian assets held abroad, and waivers from financial sanctions that had brought Iran's economy to its knees.

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