Day 13: Iran's Shadow Supreme Leader Breaks Silence as School Strike Evidence Turns Against Washington

Mojtaba Khamenei surfaces - not on camera, but in words - vowing to keep the Strait of Hormuz closed as a weapon. That same day, Bellingcat and BBC Verify place an American Tomahawk cruise missile meters from a primary school where 168 people, including 110 children, died on the war's first morning.

Fuel tankers ablaze near Iraq's southern port of Basra, March 12, 2026. Iran struck the US-owned Safesea Vishnu and the Greek-owned Zefyros in a coordinated attack on Gulf energy infrastructure. (Illustrative / Unsplash)

The war entered its thirteenth day the way it has entered most of the others: with fire on the water and no end in sight. Two fuel tankers burned off Iraq's coast near Basra. Oil storage tanks in Bahrain and Oman were hit overnight. A drone left a gaping hole in a Dubai high-rise. And somewhere in Iran - in hiding, in a location the United States has been trying to determine since the war began - Mojtaba Khamenei finally spoke.

His statement, the first since he succeeded his father Ali Khamenei who was killed in the opening US-Israeli bombardment on February 28, was not delivered in person. The 56-year-old supreme leader did not appear on camera. An anchor on Iranian state television read the words attributed to him. That detail alone - a supreme leader whose face has not been seen in public for 13 days, whose physical condition remains unknown after Israel claimed he was wounded in the opening salvo - captures what this war has become. A conflict prosecuted at the highest levels by people on both sides who are largely invisible to the world watching it.

What Khamenei said was this: the Strait of Hormuz will remain effectively closed until the bombs stop. Iran's attacks on its Gulf Arab neighbors will continue. And the deaths of the war's dead - including, by name, those killed in the strike on Shajareh Tayebeh primary school in Minab - will be avenged.

That school strike, which killed 168 people on the war's first morning, is no longer deniable by any honest reading of the evidence. On Thursday, BBC Verify and the investigative group Bellingcat independently confirmed that the munition seen in newly authenticated footage hitting the IRGC naval base adjacent to the school was a US Tomahawk cruise missile. Neither Israel nor Iran possesses Tomahawks. The United States is the only party in this war that fires them. And the United States has already confirmed it fired Tomahawks in the Minab area on February 28.

The Invisible Supreme Leader

When US and Israeli strikes killed Ali Khamenei on February 28, they also detonated a succession crisis that Iran has been managing at speed under fire. Mojtaba Khamenei - a cleric who had avoided the public spotlight his entire career, known mainly for his management of paramilitary Basij networks - was elevated to the position his father held for 34 years. The transition was fast and contested, conducted while bombs were falling on Tehran.

In the 13 days since, Mojtaba Khamenei has not appeared on camera. Israeli intelligence has claimed he sustained injuries in the opening strikes. Iran has said nothing about his physical condition. His absence from public view has fueled speculation ranging from minor injury to death, though Thursday's statement - however it was delivered - constitutes evidence he remains functional in some capacity.

The statement's content was substantive, not symbolic. He addressed the school strike directly, vowing to avenge those killed. He endorsed Iran's attacks on Gulf Arab energy infrastructure. He framed the Strait of Hormuz closure not as a side effect of the war but as a deliberate instrument of leverage - something Iran controls, something it intends to keep controlling, something it will use to extract concessions from Washington and Tel Aviv.

"Iran would keep up its attacks on its Gulf Arab neighbors and use the effective closure of the strategic Strait of Hormuz as leverage against the United States and Israel." - Attributed to Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, read by Iranian state TV anchor, March 12, 2026. (AP News)

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, a figure described as a relative moderate within the Islamic Republic's structure, separately posted online that any end to the war would require international recognition of Iran's "legitimate rights," payment of reparations, and "guarantees against future attacks." That formulation, from the president who is supposed to be the accessible face of the regime, suggests even a US declaration of victory would not halt Iranian operations. The war's endpoints, from Tehran's perspective, remain deliberately vague and maximally demanding.

Iran's parliamentary speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf went further, posting that any US attempt to take Iranian islands in the Persian Gulf would "make the Persian Gulf run with the blood of invaders." That statement was a direct response to US and Israeli speculation about targeting Kharg Island - Iran's main oil export terminal - which sits in the Gulf and, if destroyed, would devastate Iran's ability to fund the war while also sending oil markets into genuine crisis territory.

The Strait of Hormuz carries approximately 20 percent of the world's daily oil supply. Iran's effective blockade has pushed Brent crude above $100 a barrel. (Illustrative / Unsplash)

The Minab School Strike: What the Evidence Shows

The killing of 168 people - including approximately 110 children - at the Shajareh Tayebeh primary school in Minab, Hormozgan Province, on the morning of February 28 is the single event of this war most likely to reshape its political trajectory in the United States. Not because the US military hasn't killed civilians before. It has, routinely, in Iraq and Afghanistan and Syria and Yemen and dozens of conflicts over decades. But because this happened on Day 1, before any public case for the war had been consolidated, and because the evidence of US responsibility has proved impossible to suppress.

Here is what is now confirmed. BBC Verify, using footage published by Iran's semi-official Mehr news agency, authenticated a video showing a missile in its terminal phase striking a building within the IRGC naval base adjacent to the school. The base's medical clinic - approximately 200 meters from the school - appears to have been the primary impact point of the Tomahawk seen in the footage. Three independent weapons experts, including a senior analyst at McKenzie Intelligence Services and Wes Bryant, a former US Air Force national security analyst, confirmed to BBC Verify that the munition is a Tomahawk cruise missile. (BBC Verify, March 9, 2026)

Bellingcat's researcher Trevor Ball independently reached the same conclusion. The AP was able to geolocate the video, placing it adjacent to the school while smoke was already rising - meaning the school had been struck before the Tomahawk visible in the footage hit the IRGC complex. That timing detail is significant: it means at minimum two strikes were occurring in close succession, consistent with Wes Bryant's assessment that the evidence for multiple strikes on the entire IRGC compound is "indicative of a deliberate and precise" operation. (AP News, March 9, 2026)

A US official familiar with internal deliberations told the AP, speaking anonymously because they were not authorized to comment publicly, that the strike was "likely American." That unofficial acknowledgment tracks with a separate CBS News report, citing a preliminary Pentagon assessment, that the US was "likely responsible" for the deadly attack but did not intentionally target the school. The word "intentionally" is doing enormous legal and moral work in that sentence.

The US Navy has publicly confirmed the USS Spruance, part of the Abraham Lincoln carrier group, fired Tomahawk missiles on February 28. US Central Command released a photo of that launch. General Dan Caine confirmed publicly that Tomahawks were the first missiles fired at Iran by the US Navy "as part of strikes across the southern flank." The Pentagon's own illustrative map, released at a March 4 press conference, shows the Minab area was targeted. The geographic and weapons trail leads to one conclusion.

"The presence of a Tomahawk missile, along with evidence the area was hit with multiple strikes, indicates this was a US operation. Neither Israel nor Iran are known to possess Tomahawks." - Weapons expert interviewed by BBC Verify, March 9, 2026.

Trump's public response has been a case study in contradiction. On Saturday, March 7, he told reporters Iran was responsible because Iran is "very inaccurate" with its munitions. By Monday, confronted with the Tomahawk evidence, he claimed Iran also has Tomahawks - a statement no intelligence agency or weapons expert has supported. "Whether it's Iran or somebody else, a Tomahawk is very generic," Trump said. When asked why he was the only person in his administration making that claim, he said: "Because I just don't know enough about it." (AP News)

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, meanwhile, has been blocking photographers from Pentagon briefings on the Iran war. That decision - first reported by AP this week - tracks with a pattern of information suppression around the war's civilian casualty picture. House Democrats have written formally to Hegseth asking whether the US was responsible for the Minab school strike. He has not publicly answered.

Iran's Energy War: The Strait as Chokehold

Iran's military strategy, 13 days in, is identifiable: it cannot match the United States in the air or at sea in a conventional exchange, so it is attacking the global economy instead. The Strait of Hormuz, through which approximately one-fifth of the world's daily oil supply flows, remains effectively closed to commercial traffic. Iran has turned the waterway from a transit corridor into a kill zone.

On Wednesday night and into Thursday morning, Iran escalated its attacks on energy infrastructure across the region. The scale of Thursday's incidents establishes that this is not opportunistic harassment - it is a sustained, coordinated campaign.

Two fuel tankers were struck and set ablaze near Iraq's southern port of Basra, forcing a pause of operations at Iraq's oil terminals. The IRGC confirmed targeting the US-owned Safesea Vishnu, which sails under a Marshall Islands flag, claiming the vessel ignored warnings. A second vessel, the Greek-owned, Maltese-flagged Zefyros, was struck during a ship-to-ship transfer with the Vishnu. Indian authorities reported the Safesea Vishnu was attacked by an unmanned speed boat. Thirty-eight crew members were rescued; one person died. (BBC News, March 12, 2026)

Separately, a Chinese-owned container ship off the UAE coast was struck by "an unknown projectile causing a small fire onboard," according to the UK Maritime Trade Operations Centre. Bahrain accused Iran of targeting fuel tanks near its international airport overnight Wednesday - thick smoke was visible from miles away. Oman's port of Salalah was struck on Wednesday, with fire crews still working to contain blaze at fuel storage tanks as of Thursday morning. A drone left a significant hole in a Dubai high-rise building, with local authorities attributing it to a drone "falling" on the structure without specifying origin.

Iran's military spokesperson Ebrahim Zolfaqari issued a direct threat to energy markets: "Get ready for the oil barrel to be at $200 because the oil price depends on the regional security which you have destabilised." Brent crude, which had already risen 38 percent since the war began, pushed back above $100 per barrel on the news. Iran's foreign minister Abbas Araghchi warned that Iranian armed forces would "exact retribution" following the bombing of what Iran described as its oldest bank, and that Iran reserved the right to strike US and Israeli banking interests in the region. International banks including HSBC in Qatar and Citi and Standard Chartered in Dubai have begun closing Gulf offices and telling employees to stay home. (BBC News, March 12, 2026)

The economic pressure is deliberate. Iran cannot win a military exchange with the United States and Israel on conventional terms. What it can do is make the cost of the war - in oil prices, in market disruption, in insurance rates, in flight path closures - high enough that American allies and domestic constituencies demand the bombing stop. Whether that calculation is correct depends on whether pain in European fuel markets and Global South economies eventually translates into political pressure on Washington. So far, it has not.

US Navy carrier group operations in the Persian Gulf region. The USS Abraham Lincoln's group is confirmed within range of southern Iran. (Illustrative / Unsplash)

Hezbollah Rejoins, Israel Escalates

The war was always going to pull Lebanon back in. The question was timing. On Wednesday night into Thursday morning, Hezbollah answered that question with approximately 200 rockets fired at northern Israel and deeper into Israeli territory. The Israeli military confirmed the scale of the barrage. Naama Porat, a resident of the rural community of Klil, 15 kilometers from the Lebanese border, described a sleepless night in a shelter. "The noise was extraordinary, it was really scary," she told AP. "They have stocks of weapons and it just doesn't end. We don't know how much and what to expect."

That dissonance - residents of northern Israel discovering that Hezbollah, which Israel claimed to have "devastated" in the 2024 war, still possesses weapons sufficient for 200-rocket nights - is politically significant in Israel. The public was told Hezbollah was neutralized. It was not.

Israel struck back across Lebanon on Thursday, hitting a car in a seaside area of Beirut where dozens of displaced people had been sheltering. Eight people were killed and 31 wounded, according to Lebanon's Health Ministry. The Israeli military said it was "not aware" of a strike at that location - a response that has become something of a pattern in this war, with striking forces claiming ignorance of the civilian context of their targets. Israel's Defense Minister Israel Katz warned Lebanon directly: if its government does not prevent Hezbollah from attacking, Israel "will take the territory and do it ourselves."

On Thursday, the IDF announced a "large-scale wave" of attacks against Iranian regime infrastructure - a formulation suggesting these strikes are distinct from and larger than the operations of the preceding days. The Israeli military also confirmed it had struck the Taleghan 2 nuclear facility in Iran in recent days - a site Israel had previously destroyed in an airstrike in October 2024 and which satellite imagery showed Iran had been working to restore. The restoration is no longer in progress. (AP News, March 12, 2026)

Iran's security forces faced domestic pressure on Wednesday night as well. Checkpoints in Tehran came under drone attack for the first time since the war began, according to Iran's semiofficial Fars news agency. At least 10 people were killed. Whether those attacks were conducted by Israeli drones, US assets, or internal opposition groups with access to drones is not yet established publicly. The internet blackout Iran has maintained throughout the war makes independent verification of events inside the country extraordinarily difficult.

The UNHCR reported that up to 3.2 million Iranians have been temporarily displaced within the country - most having fled Tehran and other major cities toward northern provinces and rural areas. Lebanon has seen an additional 759,000 people internally displaced. UN humanitarian chief Tom Fletcher called the war a "reckless military adventure" and said the civilian plight had reached a critical threshold. (AP News, March 12, 2026)

The Civilian Catastrophe Taking Shape

The war's humanitarian picture, still partially obscured by Iran's internet blackout and restrictions on foreign journalists, is beginning to come into focus through UNHCR data, satellite imagery, and the accounts of Iranians who have managed to communicate with the outside world.

A BBC report published Thursday gathered testimony from teachers, engineers, and shopkeepers inside Iran - people who, by their own account, had supported or tolerated the Islamic Republic's posture heading into the conflict. Their present sentiment was different. "What if we're left with ruins?" one person asked. The war's damage to Tehran and other urban centers has been extensive enough that even Iranians without particular affection for the regime are beginning to calculate what they will be left with after the bombing stops - if it stops.

The Minab school is the sharpest focal point of the civilian casualty question, but it is not the only one. The IDF's acknowledgment that it is striking a "nuclear facility" in Iran carries dual-use implications - the infrastructure that sustains those facilities also supports civilian power and research programs. The US Tomahawk campaign across Iran's "southern flank" - the same campaign that the Pentagon's own map shows hitting the Minab area - has not been accompanied by a full accounting of civilian structures destroyed.

The UN refugee agency's 3.2 million displacement figure represents a humanitarian emergency of considerable scale. Most people have not fled to neighboring countries - a combination of closed borders, ongoing conflict, and the absence of easy legal pathways means internal displacement is where the crisis is concentrated. Northern Iran and rural areas are receiving populations they lack the infrastructure to support. Healthcare systems - already strained by the war's damage to medical facilities (Iran has accused US and Israeli forces of targeting hospitals; neither has confirmed this) - are under significant pressure.

The international community's response has been limited. UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has called for an immediate ceasefire. That call has produced no visible effect on US or Israeli operations. The Arab League has condemned the attacks on Gulf energy infrastructure while simultaneously declining to directly confront Iran, reflecting the contradictory position of Gulf Arab states that see Iranian aggression as a threat but also fear the post-war power vacuum if Iran's government collapses entirely. Saudi Arabia and the UAE have emergency contingency plans running for both scenarios: a prolonged war and a sudden Iranian regime implosion.

Washington's Fraying Information Control

The Hegseth decision to block photographers from Pentagon briefings on the Iran war is a small administrative act with a large signal. It says: the Defense Department is aware that the visual record of this war is not serving the narrative it wants the public to receive.

The school strike is the clearest example of why. From the moment it happened, there was a gap between what the physical evidence showed and what the administration was saying. That gap has widened every day. Trump's evolving explanations - Iran did it, Iran has Tomahawks too, Tomahawks are generic, I don't know enough about it, whatever the report shows I'll live with - represent a notable departure from the disciplined message management that usually accompanies the early phase of American military action. The administration's spokespeople appear not to have been briefed on what to say, or to have been briefed on things that turned out to be untrue.

Hegseth's exclusion of cameras from briefings is one response to that problem. It reduces the amount of visual documentation of administration officials being asked questions they cannot answer. But it does not reduce the underlying problem, which is a verified weapons analysis from three independent experts and a US official's own confirmation that the strike was "likely American." The school's dead are not going away. The Tomahawk footage is not going away.

Democrats in Congress have escalated their written inquiries to Hegseth. The resolution authorizing military force - the question of whether Trump had legal authority to begin this war without Congressional approval - remains formally unresolved. Trump appeared before Congress last week, but the authorization question was deferred in the chaos of the war's first weeks. It will return. Everything the administration has avoided answering so far will return.

Iran is betting on this. The Hormuz closure is not just about oil prices. It is about time - buying enough of it for the political situation in Washington to erode. The US midterm elections are less than eight months away. The war's public approval, buoyed by initial momentum, will face sustained pressure from $100+ oil, from images of displacement, and from the Minab school, which is not going to stop being a story.

What Day 13 Tells Us About Day 30

Thirteen days in, the shape of this war is becoming legible even if its endpoint is not.

Iran is not going to surrender. Pezeshkian's demand for reparations and security guarantees, Qalibaf's threat about Persian Gulf islands, Khamenei's vow of vengeance - these are not the statements of a government preparing to capitulate. They are the statements of a government that has decided to absorb the bombing and inflict as much economic pain as possible until the bombing becomes politically untenable in the countries doing it. That strategy may fail. But it is a coherent strategy, not desperation.

Israel's warnings to Lebanon - "take the territory and do it ourselves" - suggest a potential ground operation in southern Lebanon is being prepared or at minimum threatened. A ground component to this war would change its character entirely and substantially increase US and Israeli casualty exposure. The Trump administration has been debating ground troops in Iran proper; that debate has not been resolved publicly.

The energy picture is the wildcard that no one fully controls. Brent at $100 is manageable for most developed economies, uncomfortable but not catastrophic. At $150 or $200 - which is not a credible near-term scenario yet but is Iran's stated aspiration - the economic and political calculus in Washington, London, and Brussels changes. The Gulf Arab states are watching the Kharg Island question carefully. If the US strikes Kharg, Iran's ability to export oil disappears and the war becomes explicitly about regime change. That is what Tehran is threatening to make unthinkable.

For the 3.2 million Iranians displaced from their homes, for the families of 168 people killed in a school in Minab, for the crew of fuel tankers burning on the water near Basra - the strategic calculus is not the daily reality. The daily reality is fire, displacement, and the peculiar noise of cruise missiles passing over schools. The war is 13 days old and neither side has a visible exit. That is the situation as of March 12, 2026, 16:15 Central European Time.

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