Ali Khamenei led the Friday prayer in Tehran.

He spoke of the enemy and of the regime’s oh so righteous cause in the region. The IRGC, he said, had every right to launch dozens of ballistic missiles at Israel this week. It was a “completely legal and legitimate” act, carried out in solidarity with the people of Lebanon and Gaza with whom Iran shares a bête noire.

The sermon was accompanied by a memorial for Hassan Nasrallah, who’s one-week dead today. Wherever he is, his cousin will be joining him soon, if the two of them aren’t already strategizing from the great beyond. Dahiya shook Friday from an IDF bunker-busting exercise similar to that which killed Nasrallah seven days ago. The target: Hashem Safieddine. There was no word, as of this writing, on his fate. If he’s not dead yet, he will be soon.

Khamenei warned Israel against striking Iran, promising more missiles if they do. I wouldn’t call that an empty threat, exactly, but suffice to say he’d rather not have to make good on it. The regime’s  staring down the barrel. Figuratively and literally.

Speaking of barrels, oil was on track for its best week in years.

Brent came into Friday up almost 10%, the second-most for any week since Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine.

“‘Long oil’ is very contrarian heading into Q4,” BofA’s Michael Hartnett remarked, amid jitters that Israel might target Iran’s oil facilities.

“[T]he history of oil performance following the onset of war events shows oil [is] the best-performing asset three months [later] and gold the best after six months,” he added.

The table shows you the performance history of geopolitical hedges. On average, oil was up more than 8% three months after the shooting starts. Gold’s the clear winner over the medium-term, though, up an average of 19%.

If you’re safe in your bubble, you needn’t worry too much. “Bad geopolitical events have not been bearish for risk assets in recent years, arguably the opposite,” Hartnett went on. “Investors expect any negative hit to consumer and business sentiment to be quickly offset by monetary and fiscal policy, plus the US equity market, which is two-thirds of the global benchmark, is quite partial to geopolitical conflict given high tech and defense sector exposure.”

If you’re curious, the last time Khamenei led the Friday prayer was January 17, 2020, the month Qassem Soleimani was killed.