Iran is replacing its top national security adviser with a longtime military commander whose appointment could represent a further consolidation of power by the country’s old-guard security establishment.
Mohsen Rezaei, who led Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, will be the new secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, a spokesman for Iran’s president wrote on social media on Sunday.
He had been serving as an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei.
Mr. Rezaei is replacing Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, who stepped into the role when the council’s previous secretary, Ali Larijani, was killed in an Israeli strike during the U.S.-Israeli attacks on Iran earlier this year.
Seyed Mehdi Tabatabaei, a spokesman for President Masoud Pezeshkian, said on social media that Mr. Zolghadr had resigned, would take up a new position, and that Mr. Rezaei would take his place.
While Mr. Zolghadr is himself a veteran of the Revolutionary Guards, Iran’s most powerful security force, analysts say he does not have the authority of some other current and former senior military commanders.
The council, which includes top civilian and military officials, plays a critical role in deciding Iranian policy on the ongoing conflict with the United States. It agreed in June to a memorandum of understanding that would pause the war, although that agreement quickly fell apart because of disputes between the United States and Iran about control over the Strait of Hormuz.
Hamidreza Azizi, a Berlin-based expert on Iranian security issues, said Mr. Rezaei’s appointment was significant for several reasons.
For one, it signaled that the country’s longtime security chiefs were further entrenching their power rather than making way for a transition toward a younger generation of political elites, he said. Mr. Rezaei has been a constant in the highest levels of Iran’s military and politics for over four decades. In addition to his military role, he ran for president several times, unsuccessfully.
Mr. Azizi said the appointment also indicated an effort to counterbalance Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who has been leading Iran’s negotiations with the United States. Mr. Ghalibaf, another veteran Guards commander, is the speaker of Parliament and known to be close to Mr. Zolghadr. The turnover at the top of the security council could represent a balancing act by Ayatollah Khamenei “to prevent the excessive influence of Ghalibaf,” Mr. Azizi said.
Mr. Ghalibaf has in the past defended the cease-fire agreement that Iran struck with the United States in June, even as more hard-line elements within the country attacked the deal. Mr. Rezaei’s appointment, Mr. Azizi said, “would mean that the more hard-line side of the system is getting the upper hand.”
Saeid Golkar, a professor at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga who studies Iran’s security forces, said Mr. Rezaei’s elevation was a further sign that the Revolutionary Guards were making the key decisions within Iran.
But in Mr. Golkar’s view, this change does not indicate that those decisions would be more hard-line, or more pragmatic for that matter.
What does seem likely, he said, is that Mr. Rezaei and Mr. Ghalibaf would eventually clash because of their intense ambitions. Like Mr. Rezaei, Mr. Ghalibaf has run for the presidency in the past. “This configuration is not going to work,” Mr. Golkar said. “Everybody wants to be a king.”
Officially, Iran’s president appoints the secretary of the council. In practice, however, the supreme leader decides who fills the post, Mr. Golkar said.
In videotaped comments shared widely on social media last week, Mohammad Bagher Kharrazi — a hard-line cleric related by marriage to Ayatollah Khamenei — anticipated the appointment and framed it as part of an effort to rein in Iran’s president, Mr. Pezeshkian. Mr. Pezeshkian and his foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, have been harshly attacked by Iranian hard-liners over their efforts at diplomacy with the United States.
In Mr. Kharrazi’s telling, Mr. Pezeshkian has repeatedly threatened to resign as president to get his way, and Ayatollah Khamenei, the supreme leader, has grown impatient and warned him he would accept his next such offer.
To further restrain the president, Ayatollah Khamenei was also working on changing the security council, planning to remove “Mr. Zolghadr and having Mr. Mohsen Rezaei take his place,” Mr. Kharrazi said. He also said that Ayatollah Khamenei had told Mr. Araghchi that “under no circumstances does he have the right to interfere in the negotiations anymore.”
Ayatollah Khamenei’s office, without naming Mr. Kharrazi, denied the account, as did Mr. Pezeshkian’s office.
