…signaling no letup in war as oil prices surge
Iran named the hardline Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei to succeed his late father as supreme leader on Monday, signaling no letup in the war launched by the United States and Israel. Oil prices surged as Iran attacked regional energy infrastructure and the U.S. and Israel bombed targets across Iran.
The secretive 56-year-old cleric has close ties to the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which has been firing missiles and drones at Israel and Gulf Arab states since Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had ruled Iran for 37 years, was killed during the war’s opening salvo.
The appointment marked a new sign of defiance by Iran’s embattled leadership after more than a week of heavy U.S. and Israeli bombardment, suggesting Tehran is not close to giving up on what it considers a fight for the Islamic theocracy’s survival.
World markets plummeted and Brent crude oil, the international standard, surged to nearly $120 a barrel Monday, about 65% higher than when the war started, before retreating.
Iran’s attacks in the Strait of Hormuz have all but stopped tankers from using the key shipping lane through which a fifth of the world’s oil is carried. Fire broke out at an oil facility that Iran attacked in the United Arab Emirates. Bahrain’s only oil refinery was apparently also hit and Saudi Arabia said it had intercepted several drones attacking its Shaybah oil field.
“There is not an oil shortage,” U.S. President Donald Trump wrote on Truth Social overnight. “Prices will drop again soon,” he added, suggesting shipments from Venezuela to the U.S. could help offset the price spike.
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In Israel, sirens blared multiple times on Monday amid unrelenting Iranian drones and missiles. A man was killed in central Israel in a missile strike, the first such death in Israel in a week, and a woman was wounded.
Israel said it struck the Iranian city of Isfahan, hitting command centers for the Revolutionary Guard and its volunteer Basij force, as well as a rocket engine production facility and missile launch sites. There was no immediate confirmation from Iran.
Turkey meanwhile said NATO defenses had intercepted a ballistic missile that entered the country’s airspace for the second time since the war started.
Later Monday, Israel defense forces said they began “a wide-scale wave of strikes” on Isfahan as well as Iran’s capital, Tehran, where witnesses reported seeing new strikes, and in southern Iran.
New Iranian leader seen as more hardline than his father
The younger Khamenei, who has not been seen in public since the war started, was long considered a potential successor — even before the Israeli strike killed his 86-year-old father. His wife, Zahra Haddad Adel, was killed in the same strike.
Political figures within Iran have criticized handing over the supreme leader’s title based on heredity, comparing it to the monarchy overthrown in the 1979 Islamic Revolution. But top clerics in the Assembly of Experts apparently voted for continuity.
Khamenei, who is seen as even more hardline than his late father, will now be in charge of Iran’s armed forces and any decision about Tehran’s nuclear program.
Though Iran’s key nuclear sites are in tatters after the U.S. bombed them during the 12-day Israel-Iran war in June, it still has highly enriched uranium that’s a technical step away from weapons-grade levels. Khamenei could choose to do what his father never did — build a nuclear bomb.
Israel has already described him as a potential target, while Trump has called him “unacceptable” and dismissed him as a “lightweight.”
Both the Revolutionary Guard and the Iran-backed Lebanese militant group Hezbollah issued statements in support of Khamenei.
Top Iranian security official Ali Larijani, speaking to Iranian state television, praised the Assembly of Experts for “courageously” convening even as airstrikes pounded Tehran. He said the younger Khamenei had been trained by his father and “can handle this situation.”
AP
