Seven appointments consolidate the old revolutionary guard in the main levers of the regime.

By Gustavo de Arístegui, as published by La Razón, 16 August, 2026

In two days in August, Iran’s supreme leader completely rebuilt the regime’s security apparatus. Seven decrees, seven key positions. The most important: veteran IRGC general Mohsen Rezaei—wanted internationally for terrorism—as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, the regime’s most powerful body. Mujtaba Khamenei isn’t rewarding loyalty. He’s paying off a debt incurred forty years ago.

Let’s return to the war against Iraq. Mojtaba was seventeen years old when he went to the front. Rezaei, despite his young age—he must have been around twenty-seven—was already commander-in-chief of the Revolutionary Guard and one of the closest figures to Khomeini, then leader of the revolution. That’s where their paths crossed.

These were the years of the power struggle between the prime minister—a figure now vanished from the Iranian organizational chart—and the president of the Republic, who was Ali Khamenei, Mojtaba’s father. Rezaei sided with the president. Backing the strong doesn’t create debt; it creates clientele . Debt arises when you back someone under relentless attack from their enemies, and Khamenei Sr. was under such attack. Today, obviously, that favor is being repaid.

But that’s not all, and here’s what almost no one emphasizes. Since then, Mukhta Khamenei has remained within the orbit of the Revolutionary Guard. He belongs to the sector of the clergy under its tutelage, and it’s worth highlighting this because there is another sector, independent of it, that doesn’t share this view. The current Supreme Leader comes from the former.

An imposed choice

Hence the crucial point: his election was imposed on the Assembly of Experts and the Guardian Council by the Revolutionary Guard, taking advantage of a moment of war, eight days after a US-Israeli attack killed his father . Mojtaba—without a military career, without prior state office, and without the religious authority required by the Iranian constitution itself (to be a Grand Ayatollah)—was elevated to the supreme position. He was not elected by the regime apparatus: he was imposed upon it.

General Rezaí is no ordinary figure in this story: until very recently, he was the leader’s personal military advisor. The leader who disappeared from public life and reappeared just a few days ago, his physical and mental state after the attack on the compound of the leader of the February 28, 2026 revolution remains unknown.

It’s important to know who has been placed there. Rezaei began before the revolution , in the anti-Shah Mansurun jihadist terrorist group, whose members would later occupy many of the key positions in the Islamic Republic; many of those surnames reappear now in the August decrees. He commanded the Revolutionary Guard for sixteen years, until 1997. The liberation of Khorramshahr in May 1982 gave him a prestige that 
survived subsequent defeats . Afterward, he spent twenty-four years as secretary of the Expediency Discernment Council, monitoring and containing Rafsanjani, who presided over it. And he earned a doctorate in Economics. Being a starred general and an economist with a past as a commander in the Guard is the reason for his appointment: with an eye toward the day when negotiations will have to take place regarding what truly has the regime in its grip— its economic ruin.

The West’s mistake

The appointment process exposes the error with which the West has viewed Tehran for decades. Formally, the Supreme National Security Council is chaired by the President of the Republic, who also appoints the secretary. However, the secretary must be chosen from among the leader’s three personal representatives on the Council . Khamenei first appointed Rezaei as his representative, and only then did Pezeshkian sign off. The president did not choose; he merely ratified a decision made by someone else, from a closed list by those who truly hold power and who have appointed themselves. Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, who had been leading the Council for four and a half months, had faltered in the eyes of his fellow members of the triumvirate—now a dual power structure—and was demoted: he was appointed political advisor.

That is the fundamental error. We in the West remain determined to draw parallels with parliamentary democracies. We think of the Iranian Parliament as a genuine legislative body, when what truly matters is the Assembly of Experts. We think of the Council of Ministers as a government, when what counts are a few ministries that report directly to the leader of the revolution and over which the President of the Islamic Republic has no authority. And then there is the Guardian Council, which functions as the moral police of the regime’s inner circle, ensuring the purity and orthodoxy of all high-ranking officials, whether appointed, designated, or elected.

The more radical sector is gaining ground.

That’s why those who, when Ali Larijani was alive, maintained that the Council’s secretariat was a minor post were mistaken. They didn’t understand the workings of the highly complex structure of the Iranian jihadist regime. This body coordinates security, defense, and foreign policy decisions , and is above the Ministry of Defense. The Foreign Ministry spokesperson himself just reiterated that every negotiation undertaken by his ministry is subject to the Council’s oversight.

Analyst Hamidreza Azizi summarized the implications of Rezaei’s arrival: “It means the most radical sector of the system is gaining ground.” Similarly, Iranian analyst Omid Memarian noted that those in Tehran advocating for an agreement “are not in a position of power,” a diagnosis that confirms the ever-decreasing level of what is negotiable.

There is documentary evidence of the extent of this dependence. In June, after the signing of the memorandum between Tehran and Washington, Khamenei released a statement acknowledging the agreement: ” In principle, I had a different opinion .” Two days later, Rezaei echoed this sentiment in an interview with Iranian media, arguing that the leader’s approach would have yielded better results and explaining his opposition to the ceasefire: negotiations were necessary, he said, but without ceasing the fighting. Note the operation: a subordinate takes an ambiguous statement from the leader and transforms it into public doctrine. This is only done with a weak leader. And it precisely marks the shift we are experiencing: from those who advocated negotiating during a ceasefire to those who advocate negotiating under the fire of war.

The third name

There is a third name that the press has treated as secondary, but which, in my opinion, is a major development. The new Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, General Ali Abdollah, has been a member of the Revolutionary Guard since 1979. In other words, the head of the regular armed forces comes from the Guard. And his second-in-command, General Kiumars Heidari, who does come from the Artesh, the regular army, is placed directly below him. The influence could not be more obvious.

This confirms what some of us suspected from the very first day of this war: the Revolutionary Guard and the regime’s hardliners deeply distrust the regular armed forces . And it also shatters a costly illusion. The Americans were betting, with little real chance of success, on a palace coup by the regular army against the Revolutionary Guard. That hypothesis is entirely illusory, and now there are seven decrees that confirm it.

We are, therefore, still in the midst of a power struggle, from which two consolidated forces are emerging. Ahmad Vahidi commands the Revolutionary Guard, an instrument of pure and simple power. Rezaei occupies the secretariat of the Security Council, the arena of decision-making. My prediction: Vahidi will set the pace of the escalation, and Rezaei will define the limits of what is negotiable . As soon as a serious phase of negotiations on sanctions and the nuclear program begins, the man from the Council will prevail over the man from the barracks. There is also a crucial asymmetry: Vahidi is the number one target—his predecessors in equivalent positions have all died within months—; Rezaei is also a target, but not with the same priority.

Iran changed its facade

Finally, let’s consider who these new appointees are. Many were minor figures within the brutal and terroristic armed force that is the Revolutionary Guard. But they are old guard, not youngsters : the youngest of the newly appointed officials, Heidari, was born in 1964. This is not a renewal, nor even a change within the regime. It is the extreme hardening of a regime already hardened by war. All of those appointed were young fanatics when the Islamic Revolution erupted in 1979; all are veterans of the Iraq War, and all are ruthlessly battle-hardened and seasoned in terrorist acts, whether by design, inspiration, or execution.

What remains is what directly affects us. Rezaei maintained in July that controlling the Strait of Hormuz is worth more to Iran than dozens of atomic bombs, and at the head of what remains of the naval force operating in those waters is Rear Admiral Ali Ozmai, whose career is unfolding in the shadow of the new leaders and who has not arrived to decongest the maritime traffic through which 20% of the world’s oil and 30% of its gas passes.

And there is one fact that should suffice on its own. Since the European Union designated the Revolutionary Guard as a terrorist organization last January—with Spain voting in favor—six of the seven individuals named formally belong to a terrorist organization under European law. Added to this are their personal records: Rezaei and Vahidi have been wanted by Interpol since 2007 for the attack on the headquarters of the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA), carried out in Buenos Aires on July 18, 1994, which left eighty-five dead. Vahidi and Heidari are also on the sanctions lists of Washington, Brussels, and London; Abdollahi, on the US Treasury’s list; Hossein Taeb, the new head of the brutal Basij militia, has been sanctioned by the United States since 2010 for the repression of the 2009 protests.

A supreme leader who owes his position to those he claims to command is a puppeteer who is, in reality, a puppet of his puppets—excuse the tongue twister. Iran didn’t change hands in March: it changed its facade , and its bloody intensity. Behind it all remains the same generation from 1979, older, more hardened, and now with no one above them capable of subduing them. Anyone expecting reasonable negotiations from this leadership hasn’t understood who these hardened and ruthless killers really are.