On July 9, 2026 (Day 133 of the Iran-Israel-US war, Operation Epic Fury / Thursday), the two arcs that have defined the week closed together: the man went into the ground, and the waterway went silent. THE GRAVE: Iran buried Ali Khamenei at the Imam Reza shrine in Mashhad — the country’s holiest site, in his hometown, beside the four family members killed with him on February 28, at his own request, according to the head of his office. The ceremony started late: state television moved it to 2:30 p.m. after larger-than-expected crowds in Najaf and Karbala — where the coffin was still being carried through the Imam Hussein shrine in the early hours — delayed the body’s return. Fighter jets escorted the aircraft into Shahid Hasheminejad Airport; the governor said he expected fifteen million mourners; hoses sprayed water over crowds packed into the sweltering courtyards as the truck crawled toward the golden dome, white-turbaned clerics walking either side. The chants chose their target: “I swear by the blood of the supreme leader, Trump, we will kill you!” — beneath a bounty caricature of the president hung, of all places, at the foot of a hotel called Miami, and a Netanyahu banner reading “There will be blood.” THE ABSENCE: Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei missed the sixth and final ceremony of his father’s funeral — and the reason finally surfaced. Iranian officials told the New York Times he was barred from attending, over fears Israel would assassinate him or track him to wherever he is hiding; Reuters sources described a face disfigured and limbs badly wounded in the strike that killed his father, a man “recovering but not yet well enough” for public appearances, his exposure limited by the security services “in case of more U.S. attacks.” No image, video or voice recording of him has ever been issued — only written statements. In the Mashhad crowd, mourners raised his portrait beside his father’s: the image present where the man cannot stand. THE WAR RAN THROUGH THE BURIAL: overnight, US strikes knocked the Tehran-Mashhad railway line out of service — trains suspended, passengers stranded on the eve of a burial fifteen million were expected to attend — though Iranian officials confirmed the ceremony proceeded on schedule. CENTCOM announced “an additional round of strikes” — the third — “aimed at further degrading Iran’s ability to attack commercial shipping and civilian mariners,” the operation’s tally now roughly ninety targets including more than sixty IRGC boats. And Iran widened its reprisal map a third country deep: Jordan’s military said it intercepted eight Iranian missiles aimed at a base housing US forces, sirens sounding across US-aligned Gulf states — after Bahrain and Kuwait, the basing architecture’s landlords are being visited one by one. Across three strike rounds and three host countries, no casualties have been confirmed by any side — the calibrated exchange grammar holding, so far, by practiced mutual design. THE STANDSTILL: the strait delivered the week’s verdict in ship-tracking data. Bloomberg reported traffic ground to a near standstill Thursday — a small number of vessels signaling on the Iranian-controlled route, and the US-backed Omani corridor empty of observable traffic. Neither side’s routing regime survived contact: the governance war produced not a sovereign but a vacuum, and the tankers voted with their keels. CENTCOM posted that “Iran does not control the Strait of Hormuz,” citing more than 800 vessels and roughly 380 million barrels of crude facilitated since early May — a claim about the past, answered by the present’s empty corridor — while Ghalibaf declared the strait opens only under “Iranian arrangements, not American threats”: “if you strike, you’ll get hit.” Oil hovered near $73 as traders watched the tracking data. THE PHONES: Foreign Minister Araghchi worked the mediators’ lines — a call to Pakistan’s Field Marshal Munir, the memorandum’s co-broker, condemning US strikes as a violation of the Islamabad document and warning against further “adventurism”; separate calls to Oman and Turkey on the strait — as the talks stalled but the channels stayed warm. Iran’s embassy in Ankara rejected the NATO communiqué’s freedom-of-navigation and nuclear language as “baseless, politically motivated and unacceptable.” And Washington ran its own two tracks: a US official told CNN the strike decision flowed from Trump’s anger that the strait is not fully open and that Iran hit ships while he sat at the NATO table — the Navy striking from land and sea, the USS Abraham Lincoln positioned defensively but available for a blockade “if reimplemented” — even as the president said the exchange would not become “long-term military action,” that peace talks could continue, and spoke with Netanyahu by evening to coordinate. Net assessment: the funeral truce expired with the funeral. Mashhad was the last event on the calendar both capitals demonstrably honored — the theater protected to the end, even as the railway to it burned — and Friday morning arrives with every suspended clock ringing at once: the stalled talks, the tolls regime, the $6 billion, the blockade decision, a phone call awaiting an answer, and a strait that has gone quiet waiting to learn who, if anyone, governs it. The status holds at CEASEFIRE OVER.