Smoke rises following a strike on the Bapco Oil Refinery, amid the U.S.-Israeli conflict with Iran, on Sitra Island Bahrain, March 9. Reuters-Yonhap

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of Iran’s late supreme leader, was named Monday as the Islamic Republic’s next ruler, putting a hard-line cleric in charge as the war spreading across the Mideast sent oil prices skyrocketing with Iran launching new attacks on regional energy infrastructure.

With Iran’s theocracy under assault by the U.S. 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 Gulf of Oman through which a fifth of the world's oil is carried. Brent crude oil, the international standard, surged to more than $114 a barrel on Monday, some 60 percent higher than when Israel and the United States first attacked Iran.

As global concerns grew over economic effect, U.S. President Donald Trump downplayed the spike in prices as temporary.

“Short term oil prices, which will drop rapidly when the destruction of the Iran nuclear threat is over, is a very small price to pay for U.S.A., and World, Safety and Peace," Trump wrote on social media.

Iran has been firing on Israel and American bases in the region since the start of the war, but has also been launching missiles and drones at energy and water infrastructure.

On Monday, a fire broke out at an oil facility that was attacked in Fujairah, United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia said it had intercepted several drones attacking the Shaybah oil field.

Israel, meantime, said it was launching new airstrikes on central Iran.

Smoke rises after an Iranian drone was intercepted over the Bahrain Financial Harbour towers, which houses the Israeli embassy, in Manama, Bahrain, March 6. Picture taken on a mobile phone. Reuters-Yonhap

Source: Korea Times News