Iran names slain supreme leader’s son as successor amid oil price surge

Iran named Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of its late supreme leader, the Islamic Republic’s next ruler on Monday, putting a hardline cleric in charge as the war spreading across the Middle East sent oil prices skyrocketing with Iran launching new attacks on regional energy infrastructure.

- By Jon GAMBRELL, DAVID RISING & SAMY MAGDY The Associated Press

With Iran’s theocracy under assault by the United States and Israel for more than a week, the country’s Assembly of Experts chose the secretive, 56-year-old cleric with close ties to the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard as the new supreme leader. The Guard has been firing missiles and drones at Israel and Gulf Arab states since the younger Khamenei’s father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed Feb. 28 during the war's opening salvo.

Iran’s stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz has also all but stopped tankers from using the shipping lane oil, the international standard, surged to more than $114 barrel on Monday, about 60% higher than when the war started.

As global economic concerns grew, US President Donald Trump downplayed the spike in prices as temporary.

“Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace,” Trump wrote on social media.

Iran has been firing on Israel and American bases in the region since the start of the war, but has also been launching missiles and drones at energy and water infrastructure.

On Monday, a fire broke out at an oil facility that was attacked in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates. Bahrain's only oil refinery was apparently also hit and Saudi Arabia said ithad intercepted several drones attacking its Shaybah oil field.

Israel, meantime, claimed strikes on targets in Iran's city of Isfahan, saying it had hit command centers for the Revolutionary Guard andits volunteer Basij force there, as well as a rocket engine production facility and missile launch sites. There was no immediate confirmation from Iran.

New Iranian leader seen as even more hardline than his father