GLOBAL oil prices surged past the $100 per barrel mark in early Asian trading on Monday, reaching their highest level in nearly four years as tensions around Iran intensified and Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei was named the country’s new supreme leader.
As of the latest trading session, West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude was priced at $104.9 per barrel at 7.42an Nigerian time, gaining $14. Brent crude was also trading at $108.69, up $16.00 or 17.26 percent.
The spike followed a sharp escalation in the confrontation involving Iran, the United States and Israel over the weekend. A series of attacks targeting energy infrastructure and military facilities across the Middle East raised concerns that oil supplies from the region could face disruptions lasting several weeks.
Israeli forces struck major fuel storage sites near Tehran, while Iran continued to launch missile and drone attacks across the region. A drone strike damaged a desalination plant in Bahrain, a missile barrage wounded five people in central Israel, and an Iranian counterattack in Saudi Arabia left a seventh U.S. service member dead.
New supreme leader without Trump
Amid the growing conflict, Iran’s Assembly of Experts announced early Monday that Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, son of the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, had been selected to take over the country’s top leadership role. The decision suggests continuity in Iran’s hardline political direction, potentially frustrating efforts by the United States and Israel to reshape the country’s leadership.
READ ALSO: Iran picks Khamenei’s second son Mojtaba as new supreme leader amid tensions
United States President Donald Trump said Sunday the new leader “is not going to last long” if the Iranians didn’t get his approval first.
“He’s going to have to get approval from us,” the president told ABC News. “If he doesn’t get approval from us he’s not going to last long. We want to make sure that we don’t have to go back every 10 years, when you don’t have a president like me that’s not going to do it.”
He added, “I don’t want people to have to go back in five years and have to do the same thing again or worse let them have a nuclear weapon.”
When asked if he would be willing to approve someone with ties to the old regime, Trump replied, “I would, in order to choose a good leader I would, yeah, I would. There are numerous people that could qualify.”
Justifiying his war against Iran, Trump said the nation was planning to take over the entire Middle East, and suggested he stopped them from doing so.
“They are a paper tiger. They weren’t a paper tiger a week ago, I’ll tell you. And they were going to attack,” he said. “Their plan was to attack the entire Middle East, to take over the entire Middle East.”
It was unlikely that Iran would attack the United States or Israel without justification and would amount to uncalculated risks, analysts say.
Meanwhile, the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz, had told ABC News on Sunday that President Donald Trump would want Iranian leaders who would not threaten “the United States or allies in the region” when asked about the president’s recent comments on choosing the country’s next head of state.
“Well, as President Trump just said last night, he wants to see leadership in Iran – and this is just kind of a common sense approach here — he wants to see leadership in Iran that no longer threatens the United States or allies in the region; that isn’t attacking civilian airports, ports, shipping, terminals, hotels, and lashing out in the way that it is,” Waltz told ‘This Week’ co-anchor Martha Raddatz.
Tensions rattle markets
The geopolitical tensions also rattled financial markets. Futures tied to the S&P 500 and Nasdaq-100 both dropped by about 1.6 percent as investors reacted to rising energy prices and increased geopolitical risk.
READ ALSO: Oil prices surge amid Iran’s warning over possible ground invasion
Market participants are increasingly pricing in the possibility of extended supply disruptions, particularly if energy infrastructure or tanker routes in the Gulf become targets. Traders are closely monitoring whether the conflict will begin to affect production levels or exports from key oil-producing nations in the region.
The surge in crude prices has also pushed the U.S. dollar higher and reignited concerns about an energy-driven inflation shock, especially for countries that rely heavily on imported oil.
