Iran's decision to hold a July funeral for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei is a high-stakes bet that any emerging peace deal with the United States will hold, potentially creating a "target-rich" gathering of Tehran's most isolated leaders, a counterterrorism expert warned Sunday.

The multi-day state funeral, announced by Iranian state media on June 13, is scheduled to begin in Tehran on July 4 and end with Khamenei's burial in the holy city of Mashhad on July 9, Reuters reported.

According to Dr. Omar Mohammed, director of the Antisemitism Research Initiative at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, the timing serves as a deliberate message to America.

"A mass funeral is the most target-rich event this regime could stage, and now they would not risk one until they are confident it wouldn't be hit," Mohammed told Fox News Digital.

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"But it is the staging of this funeral that is the message, and the message is aimed at America as much as at Iranians."

The announcement also coincided with a major diplomatic breakthrough, coming as President Donald Trump announced that a peace deal with Tehran is expected to be signed Sunday.

"The regime could sign a deal that lets it keep its leverage, then bury its leader as the victor who won it," Mohammed said.

"Announcing the funeral Saturday as Pakistan said the final text of a deal was reached and signing is close, is their bet that the ceasefire holds into July."

Khamenei was killed on Feb. 28 during the opening salvo of U.S. and Israeli airstrikes against Iran, ending a 36-year tenure leading the Islamic Republic. He was 86.

Experts say the regime is using the four-month delay since the February strikes to completely reframe the narrative of the conflict.

"Khamenei goes into the ground as a man America murdered, so the deal becomes a tactical pause — revenge deferred, not abandoned," Mohammed observed. "The deeper logic is that you bury the leader as a victor, not a victim."

"They can now stage the funeral as the war's victory monument: the martyred Imam laid to rest as the man whose resistance forced America to terms," Mohammed added.

"The four-month delay was not only security. It was waiting for a win to bury him."

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Following three days of public ceremonies in Tehran, the procession will move to the clerical heartland of Qom on July 7 before concluding in Mashhad on July 9.

Analysts note the dates heavily leverage deep Shia religious iconography, falling directly within the holy mourning month of Muharram.

"This is also a staged passion play, not a schedule because the dates fall within Muharram, the Shia mourning month centered on Imam Hussein's martyrdom at Karbala, and the burial on July 9 is timed to the eve of another Imam's martyrdom," Mohammed said.

"The body goes into the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad — the only one of the 12 Imams buried in Iran, and the holiest site in Iranian Shiism — giving the regime a permanent martyr's shrine and mobilization site for years."

Mohammed noted that scheduling the opening ceremonies on the 250th anniversary of America's Independence Day carries deliberate geopolitical signaling.

"The regime had room to choose which Muharram days and, at a minimum, it's a message they are happy to broadcast; very possibly it's the point — while America marks 250 years, Iran opens the funeral of the leader America killed and calls it the beginning of its victory."

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The highly public, multi-city route presents a massive security vulnerability for Iran's new leadership.

Khamenei’s son and successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, has remained entirely in hiding due to targeted security threats and reported injury since the war began.

"By every tradition, the son leads the prayers and stands at the grave; it is the act that consecrates the succession," Mohammed noted.

"But Mojtaba has not appeared in public since the war began, runs the country by courier, and is a designated target — and a funeral is a pre-announced time and place. For a man whose every confirmed sighting is a coordinate, July 9 in Mashhad is the most dangerous appointment of his rule."

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"The regime is boxed: It needs the son at the father's grave to crown the dynasty, but putting him there exposes him as never before," Mohammed concluded.

"If he appears, it's his first sighting and a gamble; if he doesn't, the dynasty is consecrated by an absence."

New details from Iran’s top diplomat about the strike that killed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei provide some of the clearest evidence yet of the precision and strategy behind the joint U.S.-Israeli operation that launched Operation Epic Fury, counterterrorism experts said Sunday.

The account, revealed by Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi in a new television interview, also highlights what analysts describe as a defining feature of President Donald Trump’s national security doctrine: using a decapitation strike against a hostile regime while simultaneously creating an off-ramp to end the conflict.

"Well, the building we were sitting in was targeted, but the wing we were in remained intact while the other wing of the building was destroyed," Araghchi said in an interview that aired June 4 on the Lebanon-based, Hezbollah-backed Al Mayadeen television network.

While Araghchi survived the Feb. 28 strike because he was in a different wing of Khamenei's compound when the attack occurred, he went on to detail how Khamenei was in his office and how others survived.

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Reviewing the original segment, counterterrorism expert Dr. Omar Mohammed told Fox News Digital that Araghchi’s account confirms the operation targeted a specific section of the complex rather than flattening the entire site.

"In the Arabic version, Araghchi says he was in a different wing of the compound, briefing another official, and his wing survived while the leader’s office was destroyed," Mohammed explained.

Araghchi also told the interviewer that he had an appointment that day with an official at the compound regarding the Geneva negotiations and that, based on the usual workflow, Khamenei "had to be present in his office."

Mohammed, director of the Antisemitism Research Initiative at the Program on Extremism at George Washington University, added that if Araghchi’s account is accurate, this was Iran's glaring acknowledgment of U.S. strategic capabilities.

"They did not flatten a building; they took one wing and left the one next to it standing. That is President Trump’s whole doctrine in a single strike — he does not want a war of occupation, he wants to show the United States can reach the center of a hostile regime with precision and then offer it a way out," Mohammed said.

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The daylight strike on elder Khamenei’s compound was carried out by Israeli jets targeting the site with 30 precision munitions alongside Sparrow air-launched ballistic missiles.

Military officials confirmed that a precise strike sequence killed Khamenei, 86, alongside Defense Minister Amir Nasirzadeh, IRGC Commander Mohammed Pakpour and multiple top security leaders.

Trump confirmed U.S. involvement in Khamenei’s killing in a post on social media at the time.

"He was unable to avoid our intelligence and highly sophisticated tracking systems, and, working closely with Israel, there was not a thing he or the other leaders killed alongside him could do," the president wrote.

"Iran was handed the clearest message an adversary can get — we can reach your leader in his own office, and here is the off-ramp," Mohammed noted. "A rational state takes the exit. Tehran did the opposite. It fired on Israel, killed a civilian in Bahrain, struck Kuwait, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, and closed the Strait of Hormuz, setting off a global energy crisis. The surgical strike was American. The months-long war that followed was Iran's choice."

Following the leadership transition, Ali Khamenei's son, Mojtaba Khamenei, became Iran's new supreme leader.

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He has since been involved in back-channel discussions with the U.S. while maintaining a confrontational public stance.

"In Arabic, Araghchi calls the new leader ‘the young Khamenei in place of the elderly Khamenei.’ That is the language of a monarchy, not a republic of clerics," Mohammed observed. "They are rewriting the theology on air to fit a son who lacks the religious rank, who was wounded in the same strike and who then vanished for weeks. A revolution that came to power by ending a monarchy is handing the throne from father to son."

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"The real story is not that Iran is strong," Mohammed continued. "It was shown the precision of American power and the door was held open, and it chose to widen the war instead."