KEY POINTS
Khamenei said the Strait of Hormuz must stay closed and that all U.S. military bases in the Middle East should shut immediately, warning of further attacks.
It’s Khamenei’s first public comments since being appointed as Iran’s supreme leader on March 9.
Oil prices extended gains following the comments.
Conservative media keeps insisting he’s dead, he doesn’t exist, or he isn’t really in charge.
There was definitely a sense that you could just decapitate the gerontocracy and seize control of the country at gunpoint, much like the US managed in Venezuela, Syria, and Libya. They had Reza Pahlavi all queued up like a next generation Ahmed Chalabi. It does not appear to have fallen out like they’d hoped.
So now Israel and the US are just bombing anything in the country that looks halfway valuable, pretty much out of spite.
Did anyone really believe that though? It’s been wide knowledge that attacking Iran would have been a stupid move given the amount of power the theocracy has. They regularly massacre protestors and don’t give a fuck. Theocracies don’t have the same limitations of other forms of authoritarians with a central head. Everything is laid out in doctrine, which is seen as higher than law.