Iran’s newly-appointed Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei was lightly injured but is continuing to operate, an Iranian official told Reuters yesterday after state television described him as war wounded.
Khamenei has not been seen by Iranians, or issued any public statement or message, since his selection on Sunday by a clerical assembly and is widely rumoured to have been wounded in the Israeli and US strikes.
Seen as a hardliner close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Khamenei was the leading contender to succeed his father Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in the first wave of strikes on February 28.
The official did not give details about when Khamenei was injured or why he had not made any statement to the public since his appointment.
The first air strikes in the war were aimed at decapitating Iran’s leadership, and besides his father, they killed Khamenei’s mother, sister and wife, state television said.
Israel’s intelligence assessment is that Khamenei was lightly wounded and that is why he has not been seen in public, a senior Israeli official told Reuters.
The new supreme leader was pushed through with extensive support from the Revolutionary Guards, sources have told Reuters.
US President Donald Trump, who has not committed to a timeline for military operations, suggested yesterday that he was not yet ready to call an end to the Iran war.
At a rally in Kentucky, he said “we won” the war, but the United States didn’t want to have to go back every two years.
“We don’t want to leave early, do we?” he said. “We got to finish the job.”
Trump said US forces had knocked out 58 naval ships and that oil prices would come down.
ABC News said the Federal Bureau of Investigation had warned of Iranian drones potentially striking the US West Coast, although Trump said he was not worried that Iran might launch strikes on US soil.
The US will release 172 million barrels of oil from its strategic petroleum reserve in a bid to reduce oil prices that have soared due to supply shocks from the US-Israeli war on Iran, US Energy Secretary Chris Wright said yesterday.
Wright said the release is part of a broader release of 400 million barrels of oil agreed to by the 32-nation International Energy Agency earlier in the day.
Wright said the release will begin next week and will take about 120 days to deliver.
The US and Israel began attacks on Iran on February 28. Iran has responded with its own strikes on Israel and Gulf countries with US bases.
Raising the stakes for the global economy, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said it would block oil shipments from the Gulf unless the US and Israeli attacks cease. The war has shaken markets around the world.
When asked earlier yesterday whether he was looking at the threshold for the strategic petroleum reserve, Trump said Washington will “reduce it a little bit.”
“The United States has arranged to more than replace these strategic reserves with approximately 200 million barrels within the next year,” the US energy secretary said in a statement.
Meanwhile, Oman’s civil defence is working on containing a fire in fuel tanks at the country’s Salalah port, Oman’s state news agency reported yesterday, after drones struck oil storage facilities at the port.
The state news agency, citing Oman’s civil defence, said that containing the fire “might take time”, without providing further details.
Earlier yesterday, Oman’s state TV said that drones struck fuel tanks in the port. Oman’s state news agency said, citing an energy ministry official, that there has been no disruption to the continuity of oil supplies or petroleum derivatives in the country.
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