Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei said Thursday that leverage should be used to close the Strait of Hormuz and that Iran’s attacks on its Arab neighbors in the Persian Gulf will continue, the Associated Press reported.
This is Mojtaba Khamenei’s first public statement since his appointment as supreme leader following the killing of his father, Ali Khamenei, in US-Israeli strikes last month. The message was read by a news anchor on state television.
Khamenei did not appear on camera. Some reports based on an Israeli assessment indicate that he was wounded in the opening salvo of the war.
“I recommend that they close these bases as soon as possible because they must have realized by now that America’s claim of establishing security and peace was nothing but a lie,” Khamenei said in a statement read by a news anchor on state television.
The Strait of Hormuz should be used as leverage: Mojtaba
In the message, Khamenei vowed to avenge those killed in the war, including the strike on a school in Minab that reportedly killed 168 girls. Khamenei said Iran would “get compensation” from its enemy, referring to the United States.
“If it refuses, Iran will ‘take from its assets’ or destroy them to the same extent,” he said, according to the news agency.
Khamenei called for leverage to close the Strait of Hormuz and that Iran’s attacks on its Arab neighbors in the Persian Gulf would continue. In addition to attacking energy infrastructure across the region, Iran has a stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway from the Persian Gulf to the Indian Ocean through which a fifth of the world’s oil is transported, the AP reported.
Unrelenting Iranian attacks on shipping and energy infrastructure in the Persian Gulf pushed oil back above $100 a barrel on Thursday as US and Israeli strikes pounded the Islamic Republic with no sign of an end to the war in sight.
Khamenei also said that the “Resistance Front” is an integral part of the values of the Islamic Revolution.
US President Donald Trump vowed to “finish the job” even as he claimed Iran was “virtually destroyed” in the joint US-Israeli strikes that began on 28 February.
The UN refugee agency said up to 3.2 million people in Iran have been displaced by the ongoing war. It said most had fled Tehran and other major cities towards the north of the country or rural areas. At least 759,000 people are said to have been internally displaced in Lebanon.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian suggested online Thursday that for the war to end, the world would have to recognize Iran’s “legitimate rights,” pay reparations and offer guarantees against future attacks.
