For the first time, Iran's supreme leader has spoken, and what he said wasn't reassurance, it was a threat. After his father was killed in a 1988 joint American-Israeli attack on February 28, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, who took over the nation's supreme leadership, made a statement this weekend that avenged the killing "must certainly" occur. The message, which was broadcasted via Telegram and later on state television, said that retribution was a duty of the nation, and not an individual that must be met by him or her, and that the reckoning will come, albeit he may not see it, but it will come through unnamed “sympathizers across the world.”

This was no accident. The statement was made at the end of an extraordinary funeral saga Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who led the Islamic Republic for 37 years, was buried last week, over four months after his death, with mourners filling funerals in both Iran and Iraq. Even during the burial ceremonies, there was no security during the same period of burial, two Basij members were killed in an attack in Mashhad in the country, Iranian state media reported.

The strange thing about the new Supreme Leader is that virtually no one has ever met him. In the 17 months since taking the job on March 8 on Revolutionary Guard backing, Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen in any photograph, video or public recording. He has been reported to have sustained facial injuries and other wounds in the attack that killed his father and has fueled an internal debate in Iran over the legitimacy of the authority of an invisible leader when his predecessor was in power for decades. It's not that his written promise of revenge is not as much an attempt to look strong behind the scenes as it is a real threat of an operational attack.

Washington isn't taking it for granted. The United States would "completely decimate" Iran if it tried to, or even succeeded at, assassinating President Trump, the President has said, in response to intelligence reports that Israel allegedly shared with the Americans regarding an alleged Iranian plot. A financier, close to the inner circle of Iran's Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, is among those targeted by new Treasury sanctions, which are designed to choke off the money networks supporting the new leadership. Tehran's state media, meanwhile, is making no bones about its lack of interest in compromise: sources cited by Tehran's media said there would be no return to negotiations until Washington changed its current negotiating stance, while the US has said it will not negotiate until Iran is ready to abandon its enriched uranium stockpiles and to publicly agree to end attacks in the Strait of Hormuz.

This strait is the dividing line between all the stand-offs and its worth is felt every day in the world's oil markets. Brent crude was trading around $71 a barrel the day before the war broke out in February, surged above $100 during the conflict's peak and then dropped back into the low $70s as a ceasefire accord was established. It hasn't been a mere academic exercise. The disruption has been called by the International Energy Agency as one of the most severe supply shocks in the history of global oil markets, as around one-fifth of the world's seaborne crude and liquefied natural gas traffic flows through the Hormuz strait. The strikes at Qatar's Ras Laffan facility which reduced the country's LNG output capacity by an estimated 17 percent, triggered a force majeure, forcing Qatar into a process that could trigger Asian spot LNG prices to jump by more than 140 percent. Americans feel the same way, as gasoline prices exceed six dollars per gallon in several counties in California and North American jet fuel is on the rise, and the Pentagon is already spending more than $200 billion on its war efforts.

The geography of risk has extended beyond Iran and Israel. This past week, once again, unclaimed airstrikes targeted parts of southern Iran after US Central Command announced that its bombing campaign was over and Gulf capitals are back in the spotlight for Tehran's wrath. Saudi Arabia and the UAE were both said to have launched attacks on Iranian territory following previous incidences of their own energy infrastructure being hit, while Iranian lawmakers have reiterated warnings that the Emirates will "pay the price" for alleged "silent collaboration with Washington. Israel has not attacked Iran itself since June, but Defense Minister Israel Katz has stated the military is ready to return to the campaign "with even greater force" if it is provoked, and between Israel's Prime Minister Netanyahu and U.S. President Trump, the former stated they have direct contact regarding only what the Israeli government calls American movements in the Gulf.

But diplomacy is far from being removed from the equation. Through the same news cycle, Qatar's mediators have been active in moving between Tehran and Washington, arranging for the US to play a key role, while Turkey's foreign minister sent a clear message that there is no reason for his country to get into open conflict with Israel, which is clearly a de-escalation signal from a regional power that has not been afraid to criticize Israeli policy. India has also subtly shifted its posture, and strengthened security and economic ties with Israel, while relying on emergency sanctions from the United States to continue to import Russian crude at discounted rates, to protect itself against just such a kind of supply disruption in the Gulf.

What results is a country in a strange, precarious balance a ceasefire that neither side can fully believe; a supreme leader who has pledged blood, but who is literally invisible to his own people; and an oil market that has been learning to anticipate the next flare-up, already pricing it in before it has occurred, over the past four grueling months. Vengeance is the new motto of Tehran's new leadership, but this is being tallied in terms of barrels, dollars and diplomatic capital far from Iran's borders.