Iran leader vows oil pain in defiant first remarks

What happened

Iran’s secretive new leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, vowed vengeance on the U.S. and Israel on Thursday for their ongoing strikes and said Iran would continue throttling the world’s oil shipments. The statement, Khamenei’s first since being named supreme leader earlier this week, was read on state TV. He has not been seen publicly since the war began.

Who said what

“We will not refrain from avenging the blood of your martyrs,” Khamenei warned. Iran will “continue” to use “the leverage of closing the Strait of Hormuz” and is considering “opening other fronts in which the enemy has little experience and would be highly vulnerable.” Iranian attacks have left the strait “littered with damaged tankers, charred and abandoned,” said PBS “News Hour,” and Khamenei’s statement “dismissed any hope of Iran backing down from its unrelenting attacks in the Gulf.”

With Khamenei still hidden, the “central question remains unanswered,” CNN said: “Who is truly calling the shots?” According to Israeli officials, “Khamenei was in the compound that was attacked on the first day of the war,” where “his father, mother, wife and daughter were killed,” Axios said. “He was wounded but survived.” Khamenei is “likely in a secure, secret location to avoid a threatened Israeli operation to kill him,” The Associated Press said.

What next?

“Iran’s Navy is gone, their Air Force is no longer, missiles, drones and everything else are being decimated,” President Donald Trump said on social media Friday morning, and it is “a great honor” to be killing their leaders. “Watch what happens to these deranged scumbags today,” he added. As the war enters Day 14, oil prices are once again above $100 a barrel and “stocks sank worldwide over fears that the conflict could drag on longer than hoped,” the AP said.