Iran's secretive top leader vows to keep up attacks in his first statement since being appointed
A woman sits on rubble across from a residential building damaged last Sunday during the U.S.-Israeli air campaign in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, March 12, 2026. (AP Photo/Vahid Salemi)
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iran’s secretive new supreme leader on Thursday vowed to keep up attacks on Gulf Arab countries and use the effective closure of the strategic Strait of Hormuz as leverage against the United States and Israel. It was his first public statement since being chosen to succeed his father, who was killed in an Israeli strike.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, who Israel suspects was wounded in the opening salvo of the war, has not appeared in public since then. In the statement read by a state TV news anchor, he vowed to avenge those killed in the war, including in a strike on a school that killed over 165 people.
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