Iran’s elusive Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei appointed six new military commanders on Monday, most notably replacing Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) secretary Mohammad Baqer Zolqard with Mohsen Rezaei, a veteran commander of the terrorist Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC).
Radio Free Europe (RFE) noted on Monday that Iranian media had speculated for several days about the fate of Zolqard, who was rumored to have tendered his resignation to the chief executive of the secular wing of the Iranian regime, President Masoud Pezeshkian.
“The president formally chairs the SNSC, but in practice it’s the secretary who wields the greater operational influence, shaping the council’s actions more than the president himself. Even so, neither holds final say since every SNSC decision only becomes binding once the supreme leader signs off,” RFE explained.
Pezeshkian was evasive when asked about the rumors of Zolqard’s resignation, saying on Friday, “there are some differences that we are trying to resolve.”
According to Iranian media reports, Pezeshkian refused to accept Zolqard’s resignation, but the SNSC chief was nevertheless replaced on Monday. His final public act on Sunday was a belligerent declaration that Iran will not negotiate with the United States, or reopen the Strait of Hormuz to international traffic, unless the U.S. met a long list of Iranian demands, including an end to sanctions and paying war reparations.
President Donald Trump flipped Zolqard’s script on Monday, telling reporters that the U.S. will not consider lifting its “infallible” blockade of Iranian ports until Iran pays reparations for the damage it has inflicted.
RFE found Rezaei to be an interesting choice for SNSC leader because he has a long military resume that gives him stature within the IRGC — but, to the Iranian people, he is something of a laughingstock, frequently mocked for making absurd declarations of Iran’s economic strength and threats that were over-the-top even by Iranian standards.
For example, Rezaei said in 2015 that if the U.S. ever attacked Iran, Tehran would instantly take a thousand Americans hostage and charge a billion dollars ransom for each, instantly solving the “economic problems” that he usually claims are not real. He also threatened to end the current conflict by engineering the complete “annihilation” of the United States.
Monday also saw new appointments to five top posts in the IRGC and its thuggish Basij militia, all of them seemingly intended to consolidate the grip of the theocracy over a unified military command structure at the expense of Pezeshkian and the remnants of Iran’s secular government.
Most of the new appointees have been sanctioned by the United States or European Union for human rights abuses, including murderous crackdowns against protesters.
Another notable promotion was Ahmad Vahidi, who was elevated to major general and designated commander-in-chief of the IRGC. He is wanted by Interpol for his alleged role in the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, a terrorist attack that killed 85 people and was the deadliest terrorist attack in Western Hemisphere history prior to September 11, 2001.
Vahidi was reportedly tasked with developing the IRGC’s readiness for “powerful offensive operations against the enemy.”
“Strategically, the announcements made were issued in English, on X, while Iranian and Omani negotiators finalize the coordinates of a proposed shipping route through Hormuz, which is deliberate sequencing,” Dr. Omar Mohammed of the Antisemitism Research Initiative at George Washington University told Fox News Digital on Monday.
“Tehran is establishing its command structure as a fact on the ground before it signs anything,” he said.
“States exiting a conflict dismantle their wartime command arrangements, but Iran is now institutionalizing its own,” he continued. “The decrees here describe a leadership planning for a prolonged confrontation, not a settlement.”
Mohammed said the military shuffle could also be the result of a power struggle within the regime and the struggle is still in progress, as demonstrated by the lack of appointed leaders for Iran’s military intelligence apparatus.
Those positions would be especially contentious because the regime is looking to assign blame for the incredibly successful U.S.-Israeli decapitation strikes at the beginning of Operation Epic Fury which eliminated the previous supreme leader, Mojtaba’s father Ali Khamenei.
“The appointments require assigning responsibility for the counterintelligence failures that enabled the February decapitation. Whoever wins that argument — the supreme leader’s circle or the Guard’s institutional leadership — is the actor actually in control,” Mohammed said.
RFE quoted Iranian analysts who said Zolqadr’s ouster was essentially the hardline military command’s effort to discredit Pezeshkian and the secular government’s negotiators, making it clear that the supreme leader — or whoever is speaking for him — did not support the June Memorandum of Understanding (MOU), and does not wish to negotiate another such agreement.
A few dissenting analysts noted that the Iranian regime is one of the most duplicitous and opaque in the world, so it can be very difficult to pick out the sides in any given power struggle, or determine which side is truly winning. Another interpretation of the military shuffle on Monday is that Iran wants to shore up its negotiating position by sending theatrical signals that it is prepared for perpetual warfare, no matter how badly the Iranian economy fares.