Final days to claim your email-exclusive offer | | Mojtaba Khamenei, the late ayatollah’s son, has been appointed to succeed his father | Iran has named Mojtaba Khamenei, the 56-year-old son of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as the Islamic Republic’s third supreme leader.
The Assembly of Experts formally announced his selection overnight after a nine-day succession process, with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and National Police both promising full allegiance.
Supporters of the Islamic Republic rallied after midnight in Tehran and other cities, pledging support to the new supreme leader.
The appointment is significant for several reasons.
Mojtaba lacks the senior religious credentials traditionally expected for the role – he holds the rank of hojjatoleslam, several levels below grand ayatollah.
He is simultaneously the most powerful man in Iran and potentially the most vulnerable supreme leader the country has ever had.
Donald Trump has already signalled disapproval and Israel has warned it will target anyone seeking to fill the role.
He takes power during an active war, with bombs falling, oil facilities burning and Iran’s military command structure severely weakened. | Vehicles at Tehran oil depot melt after US and Israeli strikes | Whether he can consolidate authority – religious, political, and personal – over a fractured system remains the central question facing Iran right now.
Read the full story here ➤
David Blair: New supreme leader shows folly of Trump’s war ➤
Profile: Iran’s shadowy new leader hated America before. Now it’s personal ➤ |  | Jonathan Leake Energy Editor | The Strait of Hormuz, only 24 miles wide and surrounded by sun-baked rocky deserts, is among the world’s least appealing seaways, but what lies beyond attracts 40,000 tankers and cargo vessels a year.
The countries lining the Gulf produce not only a fifth of the world’s oil and gas but also a raft of other essential commodities.
They include half the world’s nitrogen-based fertilisers, vital for farms across America and Europe. The Gulf also produces a fifth of the world’s sulphur, essential for industries ranging from metal production and petrol-refining to manufacturing complex electronics.
The Strait is vital for goods going the other way too; tens of millions of people from the Middle East rely on food imports passing through it.
As multiple economic and human disasters ripple out from the Strait, who will blink first? Iran? Or Donald Trump?
This piece of analytical journalism is only available to subscribers.
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Meanwhile, In Washington, there is anxiety about spiralling gasoline costs, not just in the White House but on the streets.
Customers keep asking why there has been a “jump at the pumps”, and there are queues as motorists rush to fill up their cars. Trump will be watching closely. Every US president knows that when prices at the pump spike, their poll ratings plummet.
Trump claims ‘a small price to pay’ as oil rockets through $100 ➤
Latest updates: Asian markets plunge after oil surges by 25pc ➤ | .png) | | Donald Trump has said the decision to end the war with Iran will be a “mutual” one with Benjamin Netanyahu. The US president said that Israel’s prime minister will have input on resolving the spiralling conflict, which has now entered its 10th day. Speaking in response to attacks by the Iranian regime on the Gulf states, the prime minister of Qatar described them as a “betrayal” and a “dangerous miscalculation”.
Elsewhere, Sir Keir Starmer has spoken to Trump for the first time since the US president criticised him for not supporting strikes on Iran. The conversation came hours after Trump rebuked Sir Keir again, following reports that Britain was preparing an aircraft carrier to go to the Middle East.
Were Britain to deploy HMS Prince of Wales, it may need to be escorted by a French warship with most of the Royal Navy’s fleet unavailable or undergoing maintenance. With a number of European ships set to converge on Cyprus following the drone attack on RAF Akrotiri, Emmanuel Macron will visit the island today, pushing France to the front of Europe’s military response while Sir Keir, and Britain, are left in the cold. Follow the latest updates here ➤ | |  | | For Iran to kill six American troops, one might assume that a fearsome cruise missile, such as the Khorramshahr, which carries warheads weighing up to 1,800kg, was deployed. However, the strike was probably carried out by a cheap and crude low-flying Iranian Shahed drone that cost as little as $10,000. Serious but not, perhaps, a surprise: these drones have been wreaking havoc in Ukraine since the Tehran regime started selling them to Russian forces in the early phases of Vladimir Putin’s invasion. Continue reading ➤ | | | Iran’s IRIS Dena was destroyed by a US submarine torpedo, in the first such attack since the Falklands war | | The commander of the Iranian navy grinned as he shook hands with his Indian counterpart, both dressed in immaculate white-gold uniform, a show of India’s supposed global prowess. Just two weeks later, an Iranian ship was lying in pieces at the bottom of the Indian ocean, shattering any illusion of Indian global power. Continue reading ➤ | | | Tom Sharpe This fight is coming to us whether we like it or not and we should respond accordingly Continue reading ➤ Hamish de Bretton-Gordon The US has now removed two dictators. Putin will be trembling in his boots Continue reading ➤ William Sitwell It’s time the BBC slapped a tobacco-style warning on Chris Packham Continue reading ➤ | | To make sure you don’t miss our newsletters when they land in your inbox, click here. | | This picture shows a man who looks like Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor with a young woman on his lap | | Laura Beck and her partner, Jez Murphy, live on a converted narrowboat in Middlesex | | Unable to afford a flat in London, Laura Beck and Jez Murphy bought a second-hand narrowboat. Now, having painted the hull, fixed the rusting roof, renovated the interior, rewired, and installed a pizza oven and a gelato-maker, Laura, gives Marina Gask a very honest assessment of life on the water. Continue reading ➤ | | | While a tremor is synonymous with Parkinson’s, “30 per cent of people with the condition will never have one, and each patient can have quite an individual response to it,” says Dr Robin Fackrell, a consultant in geriatric and general medicine. That’s because Parkinson’s has over 40 different symptoms, some of which can appear up to a decade before diagnosis. Here, with the help of a specialist, Telegraph Health lists nine uncommon symptoms you should look out for and when to visit a GP.
For subscribers only ➤ | | | | | Arlene Costello with her daughter Marie-Claire, formerly known as Sophie | | When Arlene Costello and her husband Michael welcomed their third child into the world, they named her Sophie. Less than a week later, Arlene couldn’t help feeling it had been a mistake. “I didn’t dislike the name, but I just really felt as though it wasn’t ‘her’ name,” she says. So, aged two weeks, Sophie became Marie-Claire. Since then, Arlene has learnt of scores of other mothers who have suffered “baby-name regret”. Heather Main reports on a growing phenomenon. Continue reading ➤ | | | From this April, Britain’s landlords will face a wave of changes that could drastically affect the rental market. Property owners will need to prepare themselves for the coming months. In this guide, Telegraph Money investigates what these changes could mean for you. Continue reading ➤ Below are two more articles that I hope will improve your day: - The Sunday night staple Call the Midwife cranks up the nostalgia and the supernatural as it reaches the end of the road. The finale will leave a huge hole in the BBC schedule. Read our five star review here.
- From a special variety of rose to personalised jewellery, Telegraph writers and readers share 35 of their recommendations for thoughtful Mother’s Day gift ideas.
| Caption competition with... |  | Matt Pritchett Cartoonist | Hello,
Thank you for all your brilliant submissions this week. Unsurprisingly, the conflict in Iran was the theme of most of your captions, but this one took the cake. Well done, Una Dane.
Above is this week’s cartoon, a familiar sight this week in Dubai. Send me your captions here and may the best man or woman win. P.S. For an inside look at what inspires my weekly cartoons, you can sign up for my personal subscriber-exclusive newsletter here. | Cymru conversation Every weekday, Orlando Bird, our loyal reader correspondent, shares an off-piste topic that has brought out the best of your opinions and stories. Orlando writes...
The Prince and Princess of Wales marked St David’s Day with a message delivered in Welsh. They have apparently been using Duolingo to brush up their skills. When in Rhondda, and all that.
Many were impressed by their efforts, but Huw Baumgartner, writing from Pembrokeshire, was less enthused: “Only 18 per cent of the Welsh population can speak the language of heaven, so the people’s tongue is, in practical terms, English. I fully support the capacity for Welsh speakers to conduct their lives in the language, but the priority given to it by the devolved Government, especially in education, is disproportionate and tends to niggle the forgotten majority.”
P Johnson, a fellow Pembrokeshire dweller, tended to agree: “We find the prioritising of Welsh at the top of road signs very distracting. While driving, it takes extra seconds to scan the Welsh wording before arriving at the English directions, thus taking your eyes off the road. This is surely a safety issue.”
Some Welsh place names could take rather longer than that to scan. Marilyn Parrott told how, “when I started at grammar school in Cardiff, it was compulsory to learn Welsh for a year. Sixty years on, I can still pronounce Llanfairpwllgwyngyllgogery chwyrndrobwllllantysiliogogogoch without hesitation, repetition or deviation.”
There’s a line in Kingsley Amis’s great novel The Old Devils, set in South Wales, that never fails to make me smile: “They went outside and stood where a sign used to say Taxi and now said Taxi/Tacsi for the benefit of Welsh people who had never seen the letter X before.” It has probably led me to take a flippant attitude to this topic – along with being made to learn a few bits of Cornish, a language that scores profoundly low on usefulness, when I was at primary school. What do you think? Send your responses here and the best of the bunch will feature in a future edition of From the Editor PM, to which you can sign up here.
Please confirm in your reply that you are happy to be featured and that we have your permission to use your name. | | Find as many words as you can in today’s Panagram, including the nine-letter solution. Visit Telegraph Puzzles to play a range of head-scratching games, including PlusWord, Sorted, and Quick, Mini or Cryptic Crosswords.
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Thank you for reading. Have a fulfilling day and I hope to see you tomorrow. Chris Evans, Editor | |
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