Blitz Bureau
NEW DELHI: The US-Israeli campaign against Iran entered its sixth day on March 5 with what residents described as even more intensive bombing, while Iran vowed to retaliate anywhere for a US attack on a ship thousands of miles from the battle zone.
Inside Iran, the abrupt postponement of a planned three days of mourning for Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei who was killed on February 28 interrupted plans to swiftly anoint the hardliner’s son as his successor. “Today is worse than yesterday.
They are striking northern Tehran. We have nowhere to go. It is like a war zone. Help us,” said Mohammadreza, 36, by phone from Tehran, with a shaky voice as explosions rang out from what Israel described as its latest wave of strikes on Iranian government targets.
The economic fallout of the campaign intensified, with countries around the world cut off from a fifth of global supplies of oil and liquefied natural gas.
Iran vowed to take revenge for a U.S. torpedo attack on an Iranian warship off the coast of Sri Lanka, which killed more than 80 sailors thousands of miles from the battle zone.
Iran’s Foreign Minister said the ship had been struck without warning in international waters. The body of Khamenei had been due to lie in state in a Tehran prayer hall from March 4 evening to launch three days of mourning.
But the memorial, expected to draw many thousands of mourners to the streets, was abruptly and indefinitely postponed shortly before it was due to begin.
In the hours before announcing the delay, Iranian officials had said they were close to naming Khamenei’s successor, and that the leading candidate was his son Mojtaba, a powerful hardliner whose selection would be a strong gesture of defiance.
The postponement of the memorial was said to be motivated in part by fear of assassination of those attending the event while Israeli and U.S. warplanes remain in the skies.
Israel has said it would consider any replacement for Khamenei who continued hostile policies an immediate target to be killed.
The war has had global economic impact, above all from the interruption to tanker traffic through the Strait of Hormuz, where a fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas flows along Iran’s coast. Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said they had hit a US tanker in the northern part of the Gulf and the vessel was on fire, the latest of numerous reports of Iranian attacks on ships. Passage through the Strait of Hormuz would be under the control of the Islamic Republic in time of war, the Guards said.
In Washington late on March 4, Republican senators blocked a motion aimed at stopping the U.S. air campaign against Iran and requiring that military action be authorized by the Congress.