DUBAI: Iran named Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of the country's late supreme leader, the Islamic Republic's next ruler on Monday, putting a hard-line cleric in charge as the war spreading across the Middle East sent oil prices skyrocketing with Iran launching new attacks on regional energy infrastructure.
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 between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman through which a fifth of the world's oil is carried.
Brent crude oil, the international standard, surged to nearly USD 120 a barrel on Monday, about 65 per cent higher than when the war started, before retreating slightly.
As global economic concerns grew, US President Donald Trump downplayed the spike in prices.
“Short-term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, are a very small price to pay for the USA, and world safety and Peace," Trump wrote on social media.
Iran has targeted Israel and American bases in the region since the start of the war, and has also been launching missiles and drones at energy and water infrastructure.
On Monday, a fire broke out at an oil facility in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates. Bahrain's only oil refinery was apparently also hit, and Saudi Arabia said it had intercepted several drones attacking its Shaybah oil field.