“I want to say something to President Trump and to the world,” declared a gray-haired man named Mojtaba, who came to us saying he had a message.

“Soon, very soon, you will see signs of revenge on top of the White House, and soon the color of the White House will be the color of my red flag.”

“Some of these calls are simply rituals,” a government official told me. “But the anger is real among hardline critics within the establishment who oppose the new deal with the United States that killed our leader.”

To address a dire financial situation, Iran’s new leaders, after surviving weeks of war, must now continue negotiating if they are to see much-needed relief through sanctions relief and asset unfreezing.

Government supporters in what were welcoming crowds continued to approach foreigners – including what the government said were 400 social media influencers – to ask “where are you from?” They often urged visiting media to “tell the truth.”

But even among this crowd there were other voices too. Two young Iranian women, dressed in the black cloaks of most mourners, took us aside to whisper that the “true voices of the revolution” had been heard in the protests just a few months ago in these same streets.

The path forward remains uncertain as Iran buries the last of the first generation founders of its 1979 revolution.

Nearly four decades ago, I was in Iran when it buried its first supreme leader, Ayatollah Khomeini. In the frantic stampede, his flimsy wooden coffin broke and his body wrapped in a white shroud fell into the crowd.

Iran enters a new era with its third Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamanei, 56, who has yet to be seen in public since the airstrikes that killed his father seriously injured him.

The sight of his three brothers in the open-air grounds of the Grand Musalla mosque, where their father lay in a state of solemnity, made his absence even more noticeable.

Iranian officials point to Israel’s continued threats to assassinate him as well.

“He is in my heart and I hope he is safe from Trump and Netanyahu,” insisted a woman who had traveled with her family from Hamadan, a four-hour drive away, to join the procession.

But the organizers of what they have called the “event of the century” have tried to maximize other symbols.

The largest of all is the colossal statue of a clenched fist that now towers over Enqelab or Revolution Square: the “fist of defiance” meant to send a message to enemies inside and outside Iran that their Islamic Republic cannot be defeated.

The BBC’s chief international correspondent, Lyse Doucet, reports from Tehran on the condition that none of her material be used on the BBC’s Persian service. These restrictions apply to all international media organizations operating in Iran.