Hyderabad, March 12 -- Thirteen days after Ali Khamenei was killed in a US-Israel airstrike in Tehran, his second-born son, Mojtaba Khamenei, took over as Iran's new Supreme Leader. In his first address to the nation, the 56-year-old vowed to avenge those killed in the ongoing war, including in a strike on the elementary girls' school, which took away 176 lives.

When Ali Khamenei took over from the late Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, he did not immediately make a public speech in person; instead waiting until after a 40-day mourning period.

However, Mojtaba Khamenei finds himself and the Iranian government he leads in perhaps its most-desperate fight since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Mojtaba Khamenei's first statement to Iran

"Ir...