Iran Names Mojtaba Khamenei as Successor Amid Escalating Conflict

AP, March 9, 2026, Dubai : Iran named the hard-line cleric Mojtaba Khamenei to succeed his late father Ali Khamenei as supreme leader on Monday, signalling no letup in the war launched by the United States and Israel.

Oil prices surged as Iran attacked regional energy infrastructure and the US and Israel bombed targets across Iran. The secretive 56-year-old cleric has close ties to the paramilitary Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, which has been firing missiles and drones at Israel and Gulf Arab states since Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had ruled Iran for 37 years, was killed during the war's opening salvo.

The appointment marked a new sign of defiance by Iran's embattled leadership after more than a week of heavy US and Israeli bombardment, suggesting Tehran is not close to giving up on what it considers a fight for the Islamic theocracy's survival.

The younger Khamenei, who has not been seen in public since the war started, was long considered a potential successor — even before the Israeli strike killed his 86-year-old father. His wife, Zahra Haddad Adel, was killed in the same strike.

Political figures within Iran have criticised handing over the supreme leader's title based on heredity, comparing it to the monarchy overthrown in the Iranian Revolution of 1979. But top clerics in the Assembly of Experts apparently voted for continuity.

Though Iran's key nuclear sites are in tatters after the US bombed them during the 12-day Israel-Iran war in June, it still has highly enriched uranium that is a technical step away from weapons-grade levels. Mojtaba Khamenei could choose to do what his father never did — build a nuclear bomb.

Israel has already described him as a potential target, while US President Donald Trump has called him “unacceptable” and dismissed him as a “lightweight.”

World markets plummeted, and 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.

Iran's attacks in the Strait of Hormuz have all but stopped tankers from using the key shipping lane through which a fifth of the world's oil is carried. Fire broke out at an oil facility that Iran attacked in the 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.

“There is no oil shortage,” Trump wrote on Truth Social overnight. “Prices will drop again soon,” he added, suggesting shipments from Venezuela to the US could help offset the price spike.

In Israel, sirens blared multiple times on Monday amid unrelenting Iranian drones and missiles. A man was killed in central Israel in a missile strike, the first such death in Israel in a week, and a woman was wounded.

Israel said it struck the Iranian city of Isfahan, hitting command centres for the Revolutionary Guard and its volunteer Basij force, as well as a rocket engine production facility and missile launch sites. There was no immediate confirmation from Iran.

Turkey, meanwhile, said NATO defences had intercepted a ballistic missile that entered the country's airspace for the second time since the war started. Later Monday, Israel's defence forces said they began “a wide-scale wave of strikes” on Isfahan as well as Iran's capital, Tehran, where witnesses reported explosions.