Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei said on Thursday that the leverage of closing the Strait of Hormuz should be used and that Iran’s attacks on Gulf Arab neighbours will continue, news agency AP reported.
This is Mojtaba Khamenei’s first public statement since his appointment as the Supreme Leader after the killing of his father Ali Khamenei in US-Israel attacks last month. The message was read on state television by a news anchor.
Khamenei did not appear on camera. Some reports based on Israeli assessment indicate that he was wounded in the war’s opening salvo.
“I recommend that they close those bases as soon as possible, because they must have realised by now that the claim of establishing security and peace by America was nothing more than a lie,” Khamenei said in a statement read by a news anchor on state TV.
Strait of Hormuz should be used as leverage: Mojtaba
In the message, Khamenei vowed to avenge those killed in the war, including in a strike on a school in Minab that reportedly killed 168 girls. Khamenei said Iran would “obtain 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 the leverage of closing the Strait of Hormuz to be used and that Iran’s attacks on Gulf Arab neighbours will continue. In addition to attacking energy infrastructure around the region, Iran has a stranglehold on the Strait of Hormuz, the waterway leading from the Persian Gulf toward the Indian Ocean through which a fifth of the world’s oil is transported, news agency AP reported.
Iran’s unrelenting attacks on shipping traffic and energy infrastructure in the Persian Gulf pushed oil back above $100 a barrel on Thursday, as American and Israeli strikes pounded the Islamic Republic with no sign of an end to the war in sight.
Khamnei also said that the ‘Resistance Front’ is an inseparable part of the Islamic Revolution’s values
US President Donald Trump has promised to “finish the job,” even though he claimed Iran is “virtually destroyed” in the joint US-Israel attacks 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 have fled from Tehran and other major cities toward the north of the country or rural areas. It says at least 759,000 people have been internally displaced in Lebanon.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian suggested online Thursday that for the war to end, the world would need to recognise Iran’s “legitimate rights,” pay reparations and offer guarantees against future attacks.
(With AP inputs)
