Iran appoints officials to key security posts under Mojtaba Khamenei

Rezaei gains a central role as Hormuz and nuclear talks remain unsettled

Iran’s new leadership is rebuilding the country’s security establishment after the February airstrikes killed the previous supreme leader and almost his entire team of security chiefs. The appointments announced Sunday and Monday marked the most significant government reshuffle since Mojtaba Khamenei took office.

Mojtaba Khamenei has not been seen in public since the war began. U.S. intelligence agencies say he is alive but severely injured, while Iranian officials say he was injured but in good health. Top Iranian cabinet members say they have not met him since he became supreme leader.

The appointments come as President Trump seeks concessions from Iran over its nuclear program and the Strait of Hormuz. Iran’s Supreme National Security Council has been weighing a deal for days, but political leaders and security services have repeatedly clashed and have not reached consensus.

Rezaei, 71, now holds two roles on the council. In addition to replacing Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr as secretary, he became Mojtaba Khamenei’s personal representative on the body, which decides Iran’s most important military and diplomatic matters. Rezaei had previously served as a top military adviser to the supreme leader.

Over the weekend, Rezaei said Iran would not agree to any corridor through the Strait of Hormuz that it did not control. The strait is vital to the oil industry. The Revolutionary Guard’s navy, whose new commander was among the appointments, has played a leading role in attacking ships in the strait.

The other appointments placed Brig. Gen. Ahmad Vahidi at the head of the Revolutionary Guard and Hossein Taeb in command of the Basij, a volunteer force tasked with repressing protests and other dissent against the government. Taeb, a longtime protégé of Mojtaba Khamenei, led the Basij during the 2009 protests.

Rezaei, Vahidi and Taeb replaced officials killed in the war. Four other commanders named Monday also replaced leaders killed in the fighting, including the head of the Revolutionary Guard’s navy.

Kasra Aarabi, an expert on the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps at United Against Nuclear Iran, said, “The regime is preparing for a more confrontational posture at home and abroad.”

Sina Toossi, an Iran-focused fellow at the Center for International Policy, said Mojtaba Khamenei needed a stronger figure at the security council who could forge consensus across the government and security establishment. Toossi said Rezaei’s experience as a former longtime Revolutionary Guard commander and political operator could help him do that.

Saeid Golgar, an expert on Iran’s security services at the University of Tennessee in Chattanooga, said Rezaei’s appointment may represent an effort to “balance, contain, or marginalize those who favor maintaining the ceasefire or moving toward some kind of accommodation.”

Behnam Ben Taleblu, a senior director of the Iran program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, pointed to the ages of Rezaei and his predecessor, 71 and 72. “The Islamic Republic is merely arranging deck chairs on the Titanic,” Ben Taleblu said.

Rezaei is a former commander of the Revolutionary Guard who led the force during Iran’s war with Iraq in the 1980s. He was its longest-serving chief and ran for president multiple times.

He was born in 1954 in Masjed Soleyman in southwestern Iran and trained as a mechanical engineer. He joined al-Mansouroun, a guerrilla group fighting the Shah’s regime that later became a proving ground for Iran’s security establishment. After the 1979 Islamic revolution, he joined the Revolutionary Guard, became its commander in chief in 1981 and led it for 16 years.

Argentine authorities alleged that Rezaei was involved in the 1994 suicide bombing of a Jewish cultural center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people. He was removed as Revolutionary Guard commander in 1997 by reformist President Mohammad Khatami.

Rezaei later emerged as a member of a group of pragmatic conservatives who, according to a 2009 Defense Department report, sought to preserve the Islamic Republic while promoting cautious engagement with the West. In a 2012 videoconference, asked how Iran would respond if attacked by Israel, Rezaei said, “There would be at least 10,000 casualties in Israel.” In a later interview about a foreign operator for Iran’s nuclear program, he said, “We are interested in bilateral relations with foreign companies. Enrichment does not have to be inside Iran.”

Since beginning work for Mojtaba Khamenei, Rezaei has called President Trump “unhinged” and demanded that Washington surrender on Iran’s terms. His expanded role now places that position at the center of Iran’s security leadership as the confrontation continues.