Dubai, Mar 13: Iran’s secretive new leader issued his first public statements Thursday, resolving to keep fighting, promising more pain for Gulf Arab states and threatening to open “other fronts” in a war that has already disrupted world energy supplies, the global economy and international travel.
Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of Iran’s late Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei
The hard-line stance revealed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei came as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said his country’s attacks were creating conditions for the Iranian population to topple the government.
“It is in your hands,” Netanyahu said at a news conference, addressing the Iranian people. “We are creating the optimal conditions for the fall of the regime.”
Since the start of the war, US and Israeli strikes have targeted security checkpoints in Iran to undermine the government’s ability to suppress dissent, according to Armed Conflict Location and Event Data, the US-based independent monitoring group known as ACLED.
Netanyahu denounced Khamenei as a “puppet of the Revolutionary Guards.”
Khamenei is close to Iran’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard and is widely seen as even less compromising than his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. His location is unknown, and he is likely a prime target for the US and Israel.
Khamenei said in a statement read by a state TV news anchor that he was keeping a “file of revenge.” He did not appear on camera and has not been seen since his father and wife were killed in the war’s opening salvo, which also wounded him, according to an Iranian ambassador.
The war continued to escalate on its 13th day as oil prices spiralled up again to USD 100 per barrel, and stocks sank worldwide over fears that the conflict could drag on longer than hoped.
Iran has made clear it plans to keep up attacks on energy infrastructure across the region and use the effective closure of the strategic Strait of Hormuz as leverage against the United States and Israel.
At a news conference Thursday, Iran’s ambassador to Tunisia, Mir Masoud Hosseinian, said Iranian naval forces “have established full control” over the strait and “carried out precise strikes in response to attacks on our oil infrastructure.” A fifth of the world’s traded oil flows through the waterway leading from the Persian Gulf toward the Indian Ocean.
“Global energy security is contingent on respect for Iran’s sovereignty,” he said.
In other developments, the US Treasury Department announced it was taking steps to further ease sanctions on Russian oil as crude prices surge during the Iran war.
The agency said that it was granting a license that authorises the delivery and sale of some sanctioned Russia crude oil and petroleum products for the next month.
Trump signalled earlier this week that he would take further action to ease restrictions on sanctioned oil to help make for the loss of oil flowing on the market because of the effective closure of the Strait of Hormuz.
The move follows the Trump administration’s decision to grant temporary permission for India to buy Russian oil.
Hosseinian told The Associated Press the new supreme leader was wounded in the attack on his family’s home, but “it is not serious.” The hope is he will attend the massive, state-organised Eid prayer next week that his father traditionally led.
Hosseinian added that Iran’s strikes on Gulf nations have also been strategic.
“Even when we targeted hotels, we had precise information that they were hosting American and Israeli soldiers,” he said.
Khamenei called on Gulf Arabs to “shut down” US bases in the region, saying protection promised by Washington was “nothing more than a lie.”
He also said Iran has studied “opening other fronts in which the enemy has little experience and would be highly vulnerable” if the war continues. He did not elaborate, but Iran has been linked to previous attacks on US, Israeli and Jewish targets around the world.