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His first statement also carried a deeply personal dimension, according to reports from Reuters and AP. Reuters said Iranian state television had reported that Mojtaba Khamenei’s mother, sister and wife were killed in the strikes alongside his father. AP reported that in the statement he spoke of seeing his father’s body after the attack and referred to other family members killed in the same strike. That combination of public mourning and vows of retaliation was central to the tone of the address. According to AP, he said revenge would not be limited to the killing of his father and suggested that every Iranian killed by the enemy would become part of what he called a separate case in the file of revenge. In that language, the statement presented the war not as a contained military exchange but as an accumulating national and religious grievance.
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