HAFIZABAD, Pakistan - They called it a funeral. It was not.

When more than 10 million people flooded the streets of Tehran on Monday, shoulder to shoulder, black-clad, chests beating in unison, it was not grief they were carrying. It was a declaration. A message carved into the very soul of this ancient land, sent straight to the White House and every capital that still believes Iran can be broken.

Let me describe what the world saw: Damavand Avenue swallowed by a human river stretching as far as the eye could see. The hearse carrying the coffin of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, martyred on the first day of the US-Israeli strikes, was moving slowly through Enqelab Square toward Azadi Square, a 12-kilometer journey that took hours because the people would not let him go. They carried portraits of their fallen Leader. They carried banners demanding the deaths of Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu. They chanted "Death to America" and "Death to Israel" until their voices cracked.

Official delegations from more than 100 countries traveled to Tehran. Russia sent Dmitry Medvedev. China, Pakistan, India, Turkey, they all came. They understood what the Americans refuse to understand: that this was not a funeral. This was a geopolitical earthquake.

The numbers that should terrify Washington

Iranian authorities say 12 to 20 million people were expected to attend across the country. In  Tehran alone, more than 10 million mourners packed the streets. The Iranian media called it the "funeral of the century". Foreign journalists who came expecting to document a regime in crisis instead watched a nation in resurrection.

Norwegian political scientist Glenn Diesen called it what it was: a "major miscalculation by the United States and its allies regarding public support for Iran's government".