Mojtaba Khamenei named as Iran's new supreme leader

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I'm Alex Ritson, and in the early hours of Monday, the ninth of March, these are our main stories. The son of Ali Khameinae takes over from his father to become Iran's new supreme leader. Already, Mojtaba Khameniai's regime has renewed rocket attacks on Israel and across the Middle East. The physical threat to oil supplies propels the price of a barrel of crude to above$100 for the first time in four years.

Also in this podcast, I know training can take long, but I think Ukraine is an absolute champion in doing things quickly. And rapidly adapting, and that's exactly what we can teach our allies. Ukraine's top experts in anti-drone technology who want to help Gulf states under attack from Iran.

In theory, the supreme leader of Iran is chosen by God. In practice it's a highly political decision, and the nation's hardline clerics, the assembly of experts, have picked the son of the assassinated Ayatollah Ali Hamenaii, Mochtaba Hamenai. According to the Iranian authorities, his wife died in the attack that killed his father. Majtaba Kamei previously kept a relatively low profile and has never held public office in Iran. The announcement was made on state television.

الله أكبر خامنه رهبار The Islamic Republic's religious and political leaders have called on Iranians to pledge allegiance to the new supreme leader who is close to Iran's hardline revolutionary guards. President Trump previously said that Mojtaba Khamenae would be unacceptable as Iran's leader, and Israel has said it will target any successor. The choice appears to signal that there'll be no change in Iran's determination to resist US and Israeli attacks.

Danny Danon, Israeli ambassador to the United Nations, gave his reaction. It really doesn't matter if it is the father or the son. You have to look at the policy. And the policy of this regime i is the same policy to promote terror, to sow chaos to acquire nuclear capabilities so they can actually assemble it on the ballistic missiles.

Anyone who is involved with this terror regime is a legitimate target and will continue to target the IRGC and all of those who are collaborating with this regime.

Shortly after Mojtaba Khaime was named successor, Iran again fired missiles and drones at Israel and Gulf neighbors. The state news agency in Bahrain said at least thirty two people had been injured in a drone attack. The Iranian security chief Ali Larajani thanked the country's clerics for defying US threats and selecting a new supreme leader despite the bombing of their council chamber in the war. I spoke to our international editor, Jeremy Bowen,

And began by asking him if the timing of the Assembly's announcement is significant. The thing to think about is first of all, there is a man already running the war, Ali Larijani, who's the Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council.

And he has been the key man, it appears anyway in the decision making. He's somebody who in the past has been seen as actually something of a pragmatist The new supreme leader, Mojtaba Hamanae, will not have the same clout that his father built up over well so many years, practically forty years. So while no doubt he will have to try and referee between factional disagreements within the leadership, the leadership that's still alive.

You know, it's a question mark the degree to which he will be told what to do by Larry Johnny, or maybe he'll try and tell him what to do. So we'll see if it makes any difference and we'll see, as you say, whether he live. For the Iranians, and I realise that you can take this question more than one way, is he a good choice? I don't think they've got many good choices at the moment. Whatever happens. I mean they are in whichever way you look at it, the regime, the opponents of the regime

People who don't want to get involved in politics are just trying to live their lives. Everybody in Iran right now is in a tremendously difficult position. Clearly. Facing some of the greatest challenges they'll ever faced in their whole lives.

there are so many uncertainties about the way ahead. At the moment the Iranian strategy Recognizing that of course they can't outgun the Americans and the Israelis is to spread the pain and hope that second and third order consequences caused by attacks on Kuwait or the UAE or Qatar or Saudi Arabia

or others, or on the oil industry through squeezing exports going out through the Strait of Hormuz. Their hope would be that they get to a place where Donald Trump will declare victory while they still survive and if they survive at the end of it. They will declare victory too.

But that's quite a way off potentially. I mean we don't know because at the moment no side is suggesting neither side is suggesting that they want to buckle on this one. Mojitada Hermani is said to be a right winger, although not many people seem to know a lot about him. Well he's never had an official position. Um he's been talked about as a potential supreme leader for some years. But I think they were wary about looking too much like a dynastical succession.

like a dynastic succession like the Shah. You know, at the moment, the son of the late Shah, who's now a man in his sixties, is going around touting himself as a potential future leader, not with a great deal of success, it has to be said. Of course outside Iran. So looking at the senior leadership of Iran has always been a lot of analysis mixed with a lot of guesswork. And you can read analyses coming from very well qualified people that completely contradict each other.

But what I would say right now is that I think one of the major questions is whether Iran will stick to this strategy that it's got of trying to hit allies of the US. trying to spread the war, trying to spread the pain, or whether they will decide that they might need to try to make some kind of a deal.

But I think the kind of deal that the Americans would have in mind is not the one that they would want, and let's not forget Donald Trump has said he needs to choose the supreme leader well he didn't and that he wants an unconditional surrender, and that's something they won't give.

So while both sides are locked in those positions this goes on. Does President Trump have a plan and is it working? President Trump has oscillated all over the place in terms of his objective. as stated by him. When he was being dismissive about Britain possibly sending an aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean, uh he said the war's been won. Uh he's also spoken about everything from a decapitated dictatorship like Venezuela.

to the fall of the regime, to a whole new beginning for the Iranian people, though it's up to them to try and make it happen. I mean he is going all over the he gives every impression of being a guy who's making things up as he goes along. I suspect that he had hoped that they would be able to move to a pretty swift victory after Hamanei was killed. And they didn't give a great deal of thought about what happens if

That didn't do it. That Iran is not a one man show and therefore that the war was going to go on. I think there is no evidence that they did a great deal of deep thinking about the future before they went into this. Perhaps I'm wrong, but there's no evidence that submerged that that is the case.

Israel very different. They're much more clear eyed about what they want, which is the destruction of the regime. Not necessarily its replacement by democracy, but the destruction of the regime. And I don't think they're that bothered if it's leads to chaos in the country or even in its among its neighbours.

What they want is the regime to go because Netanyahu, who has believed for forty years that Iran wants to destroy Israel, wants the nuclear weapon to kill Israelis, and he has been waiting for this day, as he said himself for his whole career. So this for him potentially, he can see his lifetime's ambitions within sight, and he would argue securing Israel for generations. Again, it's a gamble, like Trump's intervention, so we'll see. Our international editor Jeremy Bowen.

The announcement regarding Mojtaba Khamenae is bound to annoy Donald Trump. The US President said he personally wanted to approve the next supreme leader which has been ignored by the Iranian government. Mr Trump told the Times of Israel newspaper that any decision on ending the war would be made with Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. A seventh US service member has died in the war after succumbing to injuries sustained in an Iranian attack in Saudi Arabia last Sunday.

Our North America editor, Sarah Smith, gave her thoughts on how Mr Trump will take the announcement of the new supreme leader. He had already dismissed him as a lightweight and said he would be an unacceptable choice to be the new supreme leader, while at the same time President Trump was insisting that he should have a say in who the next leader of Iran is and that anybody who was chosen who hadn't been approved by him

wouldn't last very long because he doesn't think this is somebody with whom he can do business and Donald Trump Does repeat again and again, he wants to make sure that Iran cannot develop nuclear weapons any time soon. But not for the next five years, next ten years, ideally not for a generation. And that requires putting somebody in charge of Iran who isn't going to pursue a nuclear weapons programme and Donald Trump very much does not think that Mochabab Khameni is that person.

But it's difficult to say where we go next because of the very confused objectives that there seem to be from the US administration. which when we hear from Donald Trump daily vary from destroying Iran's nuclear programme and its conventional weapons capability to complete regime change and demanding unconditional

surrender. So there is a lack of clarity around exactly what he wants to achieve. And we've even heard from him that he's thinking about putting US troops into Iran, about putting American boots on the ground in order to try and seize the stop Piles of enriched uranium that there are inside that country. So that's yet one more thing he hadn't contemplated when he told us he had launched this action just over a week ago.

And uh a few days ago he was speculating that this conflict might last for four to five weeks. Some of the objectives he's talking about now would take considerably longer to achieve. Sarah Smith. As the conflict grinds on, so do the Ripplers.

In the last few hours there's been a huge surge in the price of oil. While the stock markets in Asia are suffering more big losses, trading was again suspended on South Korea's main stock exchange. Our business correspondent in Singapore is Nick Mark. Well last week the price of oil rose by about twenty percent in the space of a week. This morning it's risen by twenty five percent in the space of a morning, Alex.

Things looked like they were starting to stabilize by the end of last week. Traders may be thinking, look, let's wait and see, let's see what the weekend brings. It looks like they've seen enough. I mean we saw those dramatic images over the weekend of oil and gas depots in flames across the Gulf, in Iran itself.

you've got big oil producers basically saying, Look, it's it's not worth producing all of this oil because it's not going past the Straits of Hormuz, Iran is still very much in control of anything that passes

through there I was just looking at Iraq in particular. Oil um production has gone down by seventy percent there in the space of of just a few days. And then you had what, you know, um Jeremy and and Sarah were talking about there, you know, the naming of the successor of Of the Ayatollah his son, the uh another hardliner, no indication that that that this is gonna come to an end any time soon, so trading here reflecting that very much so.

Barrel of Brent Crude, for example, now touching one hundred and fifteen dollars a barrel, a really remarkable surge. And quite a stock market route in Asia too. Yeah, unsurprisingly, just looking now the Nikkei index in Japan down around seven percent.

The cost be in South Korea down around seven percent as well. They had to put in an emergency circuit breaker to suspend trading there actually. The reason's very simple. About ninety percent of that oil and gas that's stuck near the Straits of Hormuz is bound for Asia. South Korea, for example, needs a huge amount of gas to generate electricity. China imports a lot of oil. Japan imports a lot of oil, Vietnam as well.

So, you know, when there's this big choke on the supply and this big spike in the price, it's gonna really affect economies in this part of the world. So we're just seeing some more of the losses that we're seeing seeing last week and and and those ripple effects like you say.

you know, are threatening to get bigger and bigger every day. Nick, is this just short term pain or do the markets fear that the war in Iran is going to go on for some time? Well I think what we've seen this morning implies that yes. the markets do fear that this is gonna go on for some time. Things like I say had calmed down a little bit by the end of the week, but now, given the combination of factors that I outlined,

Outlined earlier, it does seem that this is gonna go on for quite some time. And don't forget, Alex, the longer that the price of oil goes up and the price of gas goes up, the more likely it is that people are gonna be paying much more for their petrol, but also much more for their food, because transportation costs become higher, even things like fertilizer becomes higher.

Everything in short becomes higher. Nick Marsh in Singapore. The fifty six year old cleric Mojtaba Khemenae takes over a nation still under heavy attack from the Israelis and the Americans. In Tehran a huge clear up operation is underway after an oil depot was hit by Israeli airstrikes on Saturday night.

ABC Persian has been hearing from people in the Iranian capital about the attack. Their messages have been recorded by actors as you're about to hear in this report from our chief international correspondent Listousset. Hell on earth. That's how someone living in this dark described it. Tehran was on fire, the Shahran oil depot in flames.

One of thirty Israels said it bombed across Iran. The biggest attack in this war on the country's oil facilities, the lifeblood of its economy. Fire tore through the streets. Творчопс эндхом. Into ancient water channels. They're meant to irrigate the trees, cool the city, not burn it. Hassan had been heading to the depot at dusk.

When the first missile struck. I turned the truck around on the street so it would be away from the danger. But then when they fired the first missile, two more struck right afterwards. Then the gasoline started flowing towards the residential areas. Tehran was shrouded in toxic smoke. When the rain came, it was black too. Some residents spoke of their suffering in messages sent to the BBC's Persian service. They have blown it up.

Oil depot, Hesar and Bagestan areas. It was as if the night has suddenly turned into day. The city is really covered in smoke. You can smell the burning. I can't see the sun. There is a horrible smoke. It's still there. I'm very tired. I've been indoors the whole time. The port city of Boucher in the south was also targeted. Satellite images show the impact at its naval base. including a capsized vessel, at its jetty. The airbase was hit too. Iran is still hitting back.

Fragments of an intercepted missile struck Tel Aviv. The emergency services say eight people were injured in waves of missile barrages. Some managed to get through Israel's prized air defenses. But Israel and the US say their campaign is succeeding faster than expected. Sayyid Mushtabo Hussein Khaumini. And now there's a new target. State TV made the long awaited announcement.

Mushtaba Hameneh is Iran's new supreme leader. He assumes his father's mantle in his mould, a hardliner, close to the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guards. Still to come in this podcast. We are impatiently waiting to return. Personally, I would like to return to my country as soon as possible and be with my compatriots and family. The war in Iran causes difficulties for the country's women's football team.

This is not the future we were promised. Like how about that for a tagline for the show? From the BBC, this is The Interface, the show that explores how tech is rewiring your week and your world. This isn't about quarterly earnings or about tech reviews. It's about what technology is actually doing to your work and your politics, your everyday life, and all the bizarre ways people are using the internet. Listen on bbc.com or wherever you get your podcasts.

Продолжение следует... Vårens nyheter av tröjor till.

This is the Global News Podcast, other news now, and President Zelensky has said Ukrainian drone experts will arrive in the Middle East this week to help Gulf states under attack from Iran. He said they would be able to provide assistance immediately. Some air defenses in the region have struggled to cope with Iran's Shaheed drones. But Ukraine has spent four years inventing cheap but effective ways of defending their skies from similar Russian strikes.

Diplomatic correspondent James Landale is in Ukraine and has been to see the latest anti drone technology the country has to offer. We're standing in a field in the middle of the Ukrainian countryside and it's a place where people come to test drones. We've come to look at a drone called a bullet. They're putting it together in in front of us and it looks Like a very strange weapon, a hybrid weapon. half quadcopter drone.

half plastic shell and it's the latest technology, the latest design that the Ukrainians have come up with to destroy lethal Russian Shah head drones that attack Ukraine almost nightly. The bullet's just taken off, rising on its four propellers. And then suddenly whoosh away it goes it tips on its side, rockets away, and now it's just a small speck on the horizon. Its top speed is well over 300 kilometers an hour. This is one of Ukraine's newest and fastest interceptions.

And the idea behind it is very simple. The pilots launch the bullet and use a first-person camera simply to crash it into an incoming drone. They're deadly, and the pilots know they could be just as effective. against similar Iranian Shahed drones causing havoc across the Middle East. This drone pilot, Kulsain Draka, thinks Ukraine has much to offer. No naspravde, honestly, we have enough work here.

But we understand that this war is spreading across the world and that Iran is an ally of Russia. So I think we could find the resources to send our instructors to train people who are fighting the same enemy. We've come now to the factory where the drones are made. There are rows and rows of men and women soldering, assembling, fixing, sorting. And there are piles and piles of these drones. You really get a sense of just how relatively simple it is to make these drones and why they're so cheap.

Stanislav Grushin is co-founder of the General Cherry Drone Company. Are you surprised that it has taken this amount of time for the rest of the world to wake up to the importance of this? Speaking honestly, I'm really surprised. It seems that every country is preparing to the past wars, but not the ongoing ones. Have any countries come to you? Have you had extra demand, requests in the last week?

Yes. Uh a lot of state agents from different countries, from all over the world, not sure just Arabic ones who are already facing the threat from Iran, they understand now How it may be the request is Pretty high and very Urgent сказати про іншие. But he's clear nothing should damage Ukraine's own and he's looking to swap interceptors for more Patriot missiles. It's also about more than just selling drones. Allies would also need training in how to use them.

Victoria Honchoruk works for the Snake Island Institute, a defense think tank, and believes Ukraine can teach the world a great deal. I know training can take long, but I think Ukraine is an absolute champion in doing things quickly. and rapidly adapting and that's exactly what we can teach our allies, that's one. Second is uh rapid integration of interceptors in the air defense because it is quite new for allies. Just one thing important to remember is that it should be a partnership.

Ukraine gives something, Ukraine needs something in return, right? We're happy to close the sky, but let's also close the sky over Ukraine. Finally. The war in the Middle East poses risks for Kyiv. Rising oil prices fueling Russia's war machine, distracted allies turning their attention elsewhere. But Ukraine's hard won expertise in interceptor drones gives President Zelensky an opportunity, not just to win new friends and funds in the Gulf, but also to keep his war from being forgotten.

जयम्स लंडर Colombia's left wing president Gustavo Petro will soon be leaving office, but before he does so he wants to rewrite the constitution. The outcome of legislative elections on Sunday could help him, although the result could also mark a right wing comeback, a recent trend in other Latin American countries. Colombian politics remains in the shadow of powerful cocaine gangs and the decades long civil war. More recently, President Trump has threatened military action in Colombia.

I got the latest from Louis Fajardo, BBC Monitoring's Latin America Special. Results are kind of indicating a similar situation to what we had in Colombia in the previous four years. That is no party dominating Congress.

Now that could be significant for whoever becomes the President of Colombia in the elections that are happening in in late May, because during the last four years, uh left wing President Gustavo Petro who had a very ambitious agenda of reform He couldn't manage to pass a lot of these initiatives through Congress. and uh presumably the person who who takes over could be facing Yes, because President Petra still has Well hugely ambitious plans really before he leaves office in August.

Certainly, I mean he proposed a very s substantial number of uh social reforms Which to a large extent have not occurred. People in realistic terms are not expecting him to pass a great amount of them in the few months that he has left in office. What he has tried very openly to do is to make sure that a left wing presidential candidate

manages to succeed him. Uh you're mentioning that he is not allowed to run for office again. But the candidate who's favored by the government, there's a left wing candidate called Ivan Cepeda, has promised to fulfill a lot of these pledges. And Petro is trying very ambitiously to uh promote the election of him. He also, as you mentioned, he's talking about a constitutional reform that he claims would make it easier to implement all these ambitious reforms.

To what extent has President Trump and his threats against Colombia overshadowed these elections? They have been certainly an important part of uh the electoral debate. Colombia has traditionally been a very close ally of the US and many people in Colombia, particularly conservative Colombians, were shocked to see the level of confrontation that occurred at a political level.

between Colombia and the US. The Conservatives very quickly they say that Petro was endangering Colombia's interests by fighting or presenting a confrontational attitude towards Trump. While Petro's followers however say that his position has been a position of defending ideals

And in the process he has become a voice of opposition to Trump when many other leaders in the region were obviously moving in a different direction. And this has gotten him respect from a sector of Colombian politics, which as is the case in many other countries, is very, very polarized, and no one is expecting it to become much, much less polarized in the next few months.

لویس فاہری Although more than two thirds of the earth is not The surface is covered by ocean, less than ten percent of the deep sea has been properly explored. Now scientists in the Caribbean have discovered potentially hundreds of unknown sea creatures and a whole lot more. By surveying almost twenty six thousand square kilometers of seafloor, Chantel Hartle reports.

The waters off the glittering coastlines of Britain's overseas territories in the Caribbean have long been a mystery. The seafloor in this region is too deep and remote for divers to map it. Instead, scientists in Anguilla, Turks and Caicos and the Cayman Islands used advanced cameras and sonar equipment to capture data at depths of up to six thousand metres. Working with British researchers, they collected more than fourteen thousand specimens over six weeks.

Some of the more impressive finds include a fish with tubular eyes that point upwards to see the silhouettes of its prey, an eel with a glowing pink tail that flashes red to lure in food. And a dragonfish with a glowing rod under its chin. There was also a bright orange sea cucumber initially thought to be the rare headless chicken monster species. As expedition leader, doctor James Bell explains that

We still don't know what it is, but the closest relative that we can find of it has been reported in in the past was half a world away. But the discoveries didn't stop there. Using their data, the team made 3D maps of an underwater mountain range. And surrounding the steep slopes were coral reefs so deep that they appear to be unaffected by climate related diseases plaguing the Caribbean. Both of those are causing huge problems, but in these kind of offshore, more remote areas.

Those are apparently absent and that gives us real hope for the future and that's vital information. Scientists also found black coral that could be thousands of years old, making them some of the oldest ever recorded. And they were surprised to find a huge crater, a blue hole, that formed when a cave collapsed inwards.

They liken this to taking an ice cream scoop out of the sea floor. The team will now review more than three hundred different types of marine creatures to determine if they aren't new species, a process that will take some time.

Let's end this podcast with the war in Iran. The conflict has provided some difficult moments for the Iranian women's football team taking part in the Asian Cup in Australia. The players have just lost their third and final match of the tournament against the Philippines. and are now expected to head home. Last week, before their first match with South Korea, they declined to sing Iran's national anthem

A move that led to criticism at home they were described by the Iranian state TV as traitors during wartime. Marzaya Jafari, the Iran team coach, spoke to reporters after the final match. We are impatiently waiting to return. Personally, I would like to return to my country as soon as possible and be with my compatriots and family. Our Australia correspondent Katie Watson was at the match on the Gold Coast. After last week's silence, they sang and saluted.

The football was almost incidental. Politics took over. This was a chance for fans of the Iranian team to chant against the Islamic Republic. while also backing its players. There's growing concern that by choosing not to sing the anthem last week, There could be repercussions for the players and their families when they return to Iran. With three losses, Iran is now out of the tournament. But for the teams fans, the fight is a very good thing.

What were you telling the women? Yes, uh we were uh we were telling them that if they want to stay in Australia, we would support them. But I think um well I'm sure of that that they're uh they're being threatened with their family safety in Iran.

refuse to answer back to us. We're just we're here to just support them. We we we can't do much j other than just chanting for them to be honest. The team has been put in a very difficult situation here in Australia. During the match was very little interaction with the supporters, one player

When receiving medical treatment on the sidelines did blow a kiss uh to the crowd to huge cheers, it was a bit of a statement, but at the end of the match when the Filipino players uh were thanking their supporters, the Iranian team just walked out. As the players left the stadium, they became the silent stars in this drama unfolding in the rain.

The players returned to their hotel in the end. Their fans thwarted in their efforts to stop them. The team's expected to fly out of Australia soon. Katie Watson on the Gold Coast. And that's all from us for now. If you want to get in touch, you can email us at globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk. You can also find us on X At BBC World Service. Use the hashtag GlobalNewspod. And don't forget our sister podcast, The Global Story, which goes in depth and beyond the headlines on one big story.

This edition of the Global News Podcast was mixed by Lewis Griffin and the producer was Daniel Mann. The editor is Karen Martin. I'm Alex Ritz and until next time. Goodbye. KAMPAÑOS DERASMA Vårdens nyheter av tröjor till följd. Tik och på träsman.