Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of Iran’s late supreme leader, was named Monday as the Islamic Republic’s next ruler, putting a hard-line cleric in charge as the war spreading across the Mideast sent oil prices skyrocketing with Iran launching new attacks on regional energy infrastructure.
With Iran’s theocracy under assault by the U.S. and Israel for more than a week, the country’s Assembly of Experts chose the secretive, 56-year-old cleric with close ties to the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard as the new supreme leader. The Guard has been firing missiles and drones at Israel and Gulf Arab states since the younger Khamenei’s father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed Feb. 28 during the war’s opening salvo.
Iran’s stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz has also all but stopped tankers from using the shipping lane between the Persian Gulf and Gulf of Oman through which a fifth of the world’s oil is carried. Brent crude oil, the international standard, surged to more than $114 a barrel on Monday, some 60% higher than when Israel and the United States first attacked Iran.
As global concerns grew over economic effect, U.S. President Donald Trump downplayed the spike in prices as temporary.
“Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace,” Trump wrote on social media.
Iran has been firing on Israel and American bases in the region since the start of the war, but has also been launching missiles and drones at energy and water infrastructure.
On Monday, a fire broke out at an oil facility that was attacked in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia said it had intercepted several drones attacking the Shaybah oil field.
Israel, meantime, said it was launching new airstrikes on central Iran.
New Iranian leader seen as even more hard-line than his father
The younger Khamenei, who had not been seen or heard from publicly since the war started, had long been considered a potential successor. That was even before the Israeli strike killed his father, and despite never being elected or appointed to a government position.
There appeared to be some dissension over his selection. Political figures within Iran criticized the idea of handing over the supreme leader’s title based on heredity and thereby creating a clerical version of the rule of the shah, who was toppled during the 1979 Islamic Revolution. But top clerics in the Assembly of Experts likely wanted Khamenei to prosecute the war.
Khamenei, who is believed to hold views that are even more hard-line than his late father, now will be in charge of Iran’s armed forces and any decision regarding Tehran’s nuclear program.
While the country’s key nuclear sites are in tatters after the United States bombed them during the 12-day Israel-Iran war in June, there’s still highly enriched uranium in Iran 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 had called him “unacceptable.”
