Iran’s secretive new leader issued his first public statements Thursday, resolving to keep fighting and threatening to open “other fronts” in a war that has already disrupted world energy supplies, the global economy and international travel.
Early Friday, US President Donald Trump issued a new threat online to Iran, writing: “Watch what happens to these deranged scumbags today.” Trump tallied the damage inflicted on Iran and its leaders and called it a “great honor” to be responsible for it.
The remarks by Supreme Leader 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, The Associated Press reported.
“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.
Intense airstrikes hit early Friday around Iran’s capital, Tehran, as well as outlying areas. It was not immediately clear what had been targeted.
Netanyahu denounces Iranian leader
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, Ali Khamenei.
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.
Oil prices spiral again and stocks sink
The war continued to escalate on its 13th day as oil prices spiraled up again to $100 per barrel, and stocks sank worldwide over fears that the conflict could drag on longer than hoped.
To relieve the surge in prices, the US Treasury Department announced it was further easing sanctions on Russian oil by granting a license that authorizes the delivery and sale of some Russian crude oil and petroleum products for the next month.
Trump signaled earlier this week that he would take more action to address the squeeze on oil flows. The move follows the administration’s decision to grant temporary permission for India to buy Russian oil.
The new exemption applies only to Russian oil already at sea. Last week, analysts estimated there were about 125 million barrels loaded on tankers. To put that in perspective, about 20 million barrels of oil per day usually pass through the Strait of Hormuz, according to the International Energy Agency.
Iran has made clear it plans to keep up attacks on energy infrastructure across the region and use the effective closure of the strait as leverage against the United States and Israel. A fifth of the world’s traded oil flows through the waterway leading from the Arabian Gulf toward the Indian Ocean.
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.”
“Global energy security is contingent on respect for Iran’s sovereignty,” he said.
The pinch was being felt worldwide. South Korea reinstated government-set caps on oil prices for the first time in three decades as it sought to calm soaring fuel costs. The two-week caps, which took effect Friday, set maximum prices for petroleum products supplied by refiners to gas stations and other businesses.
Iranian leader calls for the shutdown of US bases
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-organized Eid prayer next week that his father traditionally led. However, Khamenei remains a target for the Israelis, who have vowed to kill him.
Hosseinian said Iran’s strikes on Gulf nations have 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.
