Iran buries Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei amid heightened tensions

NPR and Bloomberg at least name the burial or memorial; Fox does not. NPR says “Iran buried its Supreme Leader,” while Bloomberg says “Iran’s Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei will hold a memorial ceremony” for “his predecessor and father Ali Khamenei.” Fox’s Iran story is about gasoline prices, the Strait of Hormuz, and Energy Secretary Chris Wright telling Americans not to worry about “higher prices at the pump.” It contains no mention of Ali Khamenei, Mojtaba Khamenei, the burial, or the memorial ceremony. The most concrete threat imagery appears in CBS and is absent everywhere else: mourners held a long banner saying, “Hey Trump we will kill you,” and the headline frames the burial as occurring “amid calls to kill Trump.” Neither NPR nor Bloomberg mentions that banner or any call to kill Trump. Fox mentions Trump, but only in the context of him telling NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte that the call for peace with Iran is “over,” not in connection with threats at the burial. The same moment is described with notably different temperature. NPR leads with de-escalation: “Fighting between U.S. and Iran appears to have stopped.” Bloomberg uses the term “war” and focuses on whether Mojtaba Khamenei might make “his first public appearance since the war.” Fox moves the opposite direction: “tensions with Iran have started to escalate once again,” a “tentative ceasefire with Iran seemingly came to a halt,” and “Iranian attacks trigger massive US response.” CBS splits the difference with “tensions rising.” One basic question is not answered by any of these accounts: what exactly happened to Ali Khamenei before the burial? Bloomberg calls him “slain,” CBS calls him “former Supreme Leader,” and NPR calls him “its Supreme Leader,” but none gives the date, location, or circumstances of his death.