The new supreme leader of Iran has still not been seen in public. Instead, the country’s state television broadcast what it described as his first message to the nation: a speech attributed to Mojtaba Khamenei, read out by a newsreader in a studio, with no appearance or recording of the man himself. In the address, the regime declared that the Strait of Hormuz would remain closed, vowed revenge for those killed in the conflict, and urged regional states to shut down American bases on their territory. This disembodied broadcast is the first public message attributed to the new leader.

The speech came amid intensifying strikes by Israel and the United States against Iranian targets. Israeli officials say the campaign is aimed primarily at crippling Iran’s nuclear and ballistic missile programmes. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has also articulated a broader ambition: to create the conditions in which the Iranian people might ultimately remove the regime themselves, though he has acknowledged that creating such conditions does not guarantee that such an outcome will occur.

The wider region has also been drawn further into the conflict

The wider region has also been drawn further into the conflict

On the battlefield, Israeli operations have continued at a rapid pace. Over the past day alone, Israeli fighter jets carried out 20 large-scale strikes across western and central Iran, targeting more than 200 sites, including ballistic missile launchers, air defence systems and weapons-production........

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