Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of Iran’s late supreme leader, was named Monday as the Islamic Republic’s next ruler, putting a hard-line cleric in charge as the war spreading across the Mideast sent oil prices skyrocketing with Iran launching new attacks on regional energy infrastructure.
With Iran’s theocracy under assault by the U.S. 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.
