New Delhi, March 9 -- Iran named Mojtaba Khamenei, a son of its late supreme leader, the Islamic Republic's next ruler on Monday, putting a hard-line cleric in charge as the war spreading across the Middle East sent oil prices skyrocketing with Iran launching new attacks on regional energy infrastructure.

With Iran's theocracy under assault by the United States and Israel for more than a week, the country's Assembly of Experts chose the secretive, 56-year-old cleric with close ties to the country's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard as the new supreme leader. The Guard has been firing missiles and drones at Israel and Gulf Arab states since the younger Khamenei's father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, was killed Feb. 28 during the war's opening s...