TEHRAN – Defiant Iran hardliners rejoiced this morning as Ali Khamenei’s son was named the new Supreme Leader – while vowing to increase missile attacks on infrastructure.
Mojtaba Khamenei, excluded from a list of three senior clerics his father reportedly identified last year, was on Sunday announced as the Ayatollah’s successor after being appointed by the regime’s 88-person assembly.
The leader has strong links to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and was chosen by Iran’s Assembly of Experts ‘under pressure from the Revolutionary Guards’, according to Iranian media. And the 56-year-old Khamenei’s potential impact on the escalating conflict in the Middle East was laid bare in the moments after his succession was confirmed, with videos showing regime supporters chanting his name and urging more strikes.
Large crowds in Tehran waved Iranian flags and shouted, ‘Allahu Akbar, Khamenei Rahbar’, meaning: ‘God is great, Khamenei is the leader.’
More ominous still, the Iranian military vowed to respond to any Israeli attacks on the country’s energy infrastructure by striking oil sites across the region – after Israel targeted reserves the night before.
‘The governments of Islamic countries are expected to warn the criminal America and the savage Zionist regime of such cowardly, inhumane actions as soon as possible,’ Ebrahim Zolfaghari, spokesman for Iran’s central military command told state TV.
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