{"id":467302,"date":"2026-03-10T06:43:09","date_gmt":"2026-03-10T06:43:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/467302\/"},"modified":"2026-03-10T06:43:09","modified_gmt":"2026-03-10T06:43:09","slug":"oil-prices-dip-as-trump-says-iran-war-is-ahead-of-schedule-and-will-end-very-soon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/467302\/","title":{"rendered":"Oil prices dip as Trump says Iran war is ‘ahead of schedule’ and will end ‘very soon’"},"content":{"rendered":"

Iran’s new untested leader faces an existential battlepublished at 05:39 GMT<\/p>\n

05:39 GMT<\/p>\n

\"\"Lyse Doucet
Chief international correspondent<\/p>\n

\"MojtabaImage source, Reuters<\/p>\n

A leader who has never been fully tested takes the helm in Iran when its theocracy faces its greatest test in five decades.<\/p>\n

Continuity and connections have pulled Mojtaba Khamenei, 56, to the top after the assassination of his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, in the first salvos of this war.<\/p>\n

But Iran’s third supreme leader since its 1979 revolution takes charge as the Islamic Republic confronts an existential battle.<\/p>\n

For those who still mourn the loss of the many thousands killed in that crackdown on those protests, a harsh, hardline regime seems set to become even harsher.<\/p>\n

Mojtaba Khamenei worked for decades in his father’s shadow; he knows all the details about how the deep state works when it confronts external threats and internal upheaval.<\/p>\n

And this war is no longer just a political fight; it’s intensely personal. It’s also about revenge.<\/p>\n

Mojtaba Khamenei lost not just his father in the Israeli strike on the supreme leader’s compound, but also his mother, Mansoureh Khojasteh Bagherzadeh, his wife Zahra Haddad-Adel, as well as a son, on that fateful Saturday morning.<\/p>\n

Trump is warning that Mojtaba Khamenei “won’t last long”. He is in Israel’s sights too, with Defence Minister Israel Katz calling him “an unequivocal target”.<\/p>\n

So Khamenei may still remain in the shadows for a while. It will deepen the mystery around this reclusive cleric.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Iran’s new untested leader faces an existential battlepublished at 05:39 GMT 05:39 GMT Lyse DoucetChief international correspondent Image…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":467303,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":{"0":"post-467302","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=467302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/467302\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/467303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=467302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=467302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=467302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}