Iran names Mohsen Rezaei as new head of top national security body

By AFP 9 August 2026, 10:38 pm

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In this picture made available by Young Journalists Club, YJC, then-presidential candidate Mohsen Rezaei speaks with state-run TV journalists in Tehran, Iran, June 12, 2021. (Ayoub Ghaderi/ Young Journalists Club, YJC via AP/File)

The former commander in chief of Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, Mohsen Rezaei, has been named head of the country’s highest national security body, the Iranian presidency announces.

“In light of the resignation of Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr from his position as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and his appointment to new functions, President Masoud Pezeshkian has named Mohsen Rezaei as the head of this body,” presidency spokesman Mehdi Tabatabaei says on X.

Rezaei, 71, led the Guards from 1981 to 1997 — a tenure that included almost all of the Iran-Iraq war — before going on to occupy several high-ranking political posts. He recently served as military adviser to new Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei.

Rezaei declared in July that control of the Strait of Hormuz, now at the center of the ongoing conflict between Iran and the United States, was “more important than dozens of atomic bombs.”

His predecessor, Zolghadr, was also a former Guards commander and took up leadership of the council in March.

He will now become a political adviser to Khamenei, according to a statement released by the supreme leader’s office.