New Delhi, July 4 -- Ayatollah Ali Khamenei dramatically remolded Iran during more than three decades as supreme leader, turning it into a regional powerhouse and bringing it increasingly into confrontation with Israel and the United States.

His dayslong funeral begins Saturday, months after being killed at the start of the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran.

Khamenei took the reins after the death in 1989 of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the fiery ideologue who led the overthrow of the shah and installed rule by Shiite Muslim clerics. It fell to Khamenei, a stodgier figure with weaker religious credentials, to turn that revolutionary vision into a state establishment.

He supported myriad armed groups in the Middle East, pushed ahead with Iran's ...