Amid rumors about his health, Mojtaba Khamenei has still not appeared in public since he was appointed new supreme leader of Iran after the death of his fatherAli Khamenei, a couple of weeks ago. This Thursday, however, state television broadcast what appears to be his first official message in office, in which the ayatollah addressed the nation without appearing on camera.
According to Iranian media, Khamenei has demanded that the United States withdraw all its military bases from the region and has warned that they will continue to be attacked. In his statements, he also promised to “avenge the blood of the martyrs”, referring to the attack on the Shajareh-Tayyebeh school in Minab, where 175 people, most of them girls, died. Now, he has not expressly mentioned his father.
“We will be especially sensitive regarding the blood of our children. Therefore, the crime that the enemy deliberately committed against the school in Minab, and some similar cases, has a special status in this accountability process,” Khamenei said. In addition to insisting on the unity of the Iranian people, he has announced that he will continue with the blockade of the Strait of Hormuz as “tool of pressure on the enemy”.
In fact, what is now the thirteenth day of the war has begun with new attacks against oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz, near the coast of Iraq, as well as bombings in Dubai, Bahrain and Kuwait.
As fears grow of a protracted war, as oil reserves released by the International Energy Agency (IEA) would only cover 20 days of supply through Hormuz, raising international concern about the region’s energy security.
For his part, Donald Trump has published a message on social networks in which he stated that, as president of the United States, “it is much more important to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons and threatening the Middle East and the world” than to obtain profits from oil.
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