Iran state TV Channel Two has confirmed that Mansoureh Khojaste Bagherzadeh, wife of Iran’s Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has also been killed “at home”.
Iranian outlets had previously reported that Bagherzadeh was in a coma.
Previously, Iranian media had said that Khamenei’s daughter, grandchild and son-in-law have been killed.
Khamenei and his wife had six children, four sons and two daughters.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who assembled theocratic power in Iran over the decades as its top leader and sought to turn it into a regional powerhouse, bringing it into confrontation with Israel and the United States over its nuclear program while crushing democracy protests, was killed in U.S. and Israeli strikes. He was 86.
Iranian state media reported the death early Sunday, after a major attack launched by Israel and the United States. U.S. President Donald Trump said hours earlier that Khamenei had been killed in the joint operation.
Khamenei dramatically remolded the Islamic Republic since he took the reins after the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in 1989. Khomeini was the fiery, charismatic ideologue who led the overthrow of the shah and installed rule by Shiite Muslim clerics tasked with spreading religious purity. It fell to Khamenei, a stodgier figure with weaker religious credentials and a leaden demeanor, to turn that revolutionary vision into a state establishment.
- Agencies
