Iran names new leader as oil tops $100, deaths mount
Mojtaba Khamenei has been chosen to succeed his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
What happened
Iran announced Monday morning that Mojtaba Khamenei has been chosen to succeed his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as supreme leader in a “decisive vote” by the Assembly of Experts.
Elevating the younger Khamenei “cements hard-line theocratic rule” in Iran and “sends a strong message of defiance against President Donald Trump” as the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran enters its 10th day, The Washington Post said.
Oil prices rose above $100 a barrel Sunday for the first time since 2022, and stocks fell sharply in Asia ahead of expected losses when U.S. markets open. The Pentagon said a seventh U.S. service member died from wounds sustained in the war. Israel announced its first two military deaths of the war, and Saudi Arabia its first two civilian deaths. U.S. and Israeli strikes had killed at least 1,332 Iranian civilians as of Friday, according to Iran’s United Nations ambassador.
Who said what
A week into “Trump’s war on Iran, the most severe shock to energy markets since the 1970s is cascading through the world economy,” The Wall Street Journal said. Iranian attacks have shut down oil and gas production in Gulf Arab states and throttled shipping through the Strait of Hormuz, the “superhighway for about a fifth of global supplies of oil and liquefied natural gas.” Oil prices climbed above $119 a barrel Monday morning, and benchmark Brent crude “was on track for its biggest one-day gain ever in both percentage and absolute terms,” Reuters said.
Anything above the “psychologically important $100-a-barrel mark is going to increase pain for consumers, many of whom don’t support the war,” Axios said. It’s also a “political setback” for Trump. Higher “short term oil prices” are “a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace,” Trump said on social media Sunday. “ONLY FOOLS WOULD THINK DIFFERENTLY!”
Iran’s new supreme leader “is believed to hold views that are even more hardline than his late father,” The Associated Press said. Khamenei, 56, “has been an influential figure in the shadows of power” and has “very close ties to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps,” The New York Times said. But he is “something of a mystery even within Iran.”
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What next?
A classified February report from the U.S. National Intelligence Council “found that even a large-scale assault” on Iran “would be unlikely to oust the Islamic republic’s entrenched military and clerical establishment,” the Post said. With “no obvious offramp in the escalating Middle East conflict,” IG market analyst Tony Sycamore said in a note, the “risk of more lasting economic damage continues to build by the day.”
