Iran named the hard-line Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei to succeed his late father as supreme leader on Monday, signaling no letup in the war launched by the United States and Israel. Oil prices surged as Iran attacked regional energy infrastructure and the U.S. and Israel bombed targets across Iran.
The secretive 56-year-old cleric — – only the third supreme leader in the history of the Islamic Republic — has close ties to the paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, which has been firing missiles and drones at Israel and Gulf Arab states since Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had ruled since 1989, 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 U.S. and Israeli bombardment, suggesting Tehran is not close to giving up on what it considers a fight for the Islamic theocracy’s survival.
Oil prices spiked near $120 per barrel Monday as the Iran war intensified, threatening production and shipping in the Middle East and pummeling financial markets.
Prices eased only after French President Emmanuel Macron said the Group of Seven nations could dip into their emergency oil stockpiles in response to soaring prices.
The price for a barrel of Brent crude, the international standard, surged to $119.50 per barrel early in the day but later was trading above $101 per barrel, up 9%.
West Texas Intermediate, the light, sweet crude oil produced in the United States, also soared above $119.48 per barrel but fell back closer to $100.
Justice Department lawyers announced Monday that they’d reached a settlement in their antitrust lawsuit against Ticketmaster and its parent company, Live Nation Entertainment, in a case that alleged an illegal monopoly over live events in America. But it remained possible that some states might continue a trial on their own.
The announcement by the Justice Department at the start of the trial in federal court in Manhattan was greeted angrily by Judge Arun Subramanian, who said no one informed him of the tentative deal until late Sunday even though a term sheet for a possible settlement was signed on Thursday.
Megan Farrell can be reached at farr9505@stthomas.edu.
