As Americans celebrate Independence Day and the nation’s 250th anniversary on Saturday, Iran is staging the long-delayed state funeral for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in what analysts say is a carefully choreographed display of regime survival. According to a Washington Post report, Khamenei’s death at the outset of the U.S.-Israel war initially raised hopes in Washington and Jerusalem that the Islamic Republic was nearing collapse.

Instead, the funeral marks the emergence of a younger, more hard-line leadership under his son and successor, Mojtaba Khamenei. “The bottom line is that we are facing a new, bolder, self-confident Iran,” Raz Zimmt, head of Iran research at Israel’s Institute for National Security Studies, told the outlet. While Iran “might be weaker when it comes to its economic situation, its industries, some of its strategic capabilities,” he said, the country’s leadership has become more determined rather than less.

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