Mansoureh Khojasteh Bagherzadeh, the wife of Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, has died after succumbing to injuries she sustained in the US-Israeli airstrike that killed her husband on Saturday, Al Jazeera has reported.
Bagherzadeh, believed to have been 79 years old, passed away two days after the strike on Khamenei’s compound in Tehran. She is among several members of the family killed as a result of the attack. Iranian state media reported on Sunday that Khamenei’s daughter, grandchild, daughter-in-law and son-in-law also died in the strike.
Bagherzadeh had been married to Khamenei since 1965, and the couple had six children together — four sons and two daughters. Despite spending decades as the wife of one of the world’s most consequential political and religious leaders, she remained largely absent from public life throughout his rule. She held no formal position within the Iranian state and was rarely seen in public or on camera.
In a rare interview with Iranian state media in 2011, Bagherzadeh reflected on her role during the years her husband spent opposing the Shah prior to the 1979 revolution, including periods when he was imprisoned. She described her primary contribution as maintaining stability in the home. “I think my biggest role was to preserve a calm atmosphere in our home so that he could do his work in peace,” she said, adding that during prison visits she would deliberately withhold news of any difficulties the family faced. She also acknowledged playing a practical role in the revolutionary movement, including distributing pamphlets and carrying messages, though she spoke of those activities modestly, saying she did not consider them “worth mentioning.”
Asked in the same interview whether her husband assisted with domestic life, she said: “He neither currently has time nor do I expect him to do so,” before describing what she considered an admirable quality in him — that despite returning home tired, he made efforts to keep the pressures of his work separate from family life.
The deaths of Bagherzadeh and multiple other family members in the strike will form part of the broader international reckoning with the events surrounding Operation Epic Fury, as governments and institutions continue to assess the consequences of the attack on Tehran.
