Who is Mohammad Zolghadr, the Pasdaran hawk who succeeded Ali Larijani

The war between the United States, Israel and Iran has decimated the leadership of the Islamic Republic, forcing Tehran to a forced renewal of very important institutional roles. Whoever takes the place of apex figures in a moment of emergency, however, is rarely a dove and more often has the characteristics of a hawk. This was the case for the new supreme leader Mojtaba Khamenei, who is very close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards, and it also seems to be the case for Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, who succeeds Ali Larijani after the latter was killed in an Israeli raid. According to the Iranian media, Zolghadr is thus the new secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, one of the country's most powerful institutions that defines defence, nuclear and foreign policy strategies.

Born in 1954 in Fasa, in the south of the country, Zolghadr was the head of the electoral headquarters of the intransigent political faction, the Popular Front of Islamic Revolutionary Forces. He has long been a prominent personality within the Iranian political and military landscape, with leading roles in the security sector. Zolghadr attended the University of Tehran, where he obtained a graduate degree in Economics before the Islamic Revolution of 1979. In his youth, along with future members of the Islamic Revolution Guards, he was associated with the Mansouroun group, an Islamist militant organisation active at the time. There are other figures in the family who are part of the political fabric of the Islamic Republic: his wife, Sedigheh Begum Hejazi, served as the Director General of Iran's Office for Women and Family Affairs; while his son-in-law, Kazem Gharibabadi, is a diplomat who has represented Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) and other international organisations.

In the early 1980s, Zolghadr joined the Guards of the Islamic Revolution Corps, in whose ranks he held various positions. He was deputy minister for strategic affairs, social security and crime prevention in Tehran's judicial system, as well as deputy interior minister under President Mahmud Ahmadinejad. In 2007, he was also appointed deputy chief of staff of the armed forces for affairs related to the Basij militia. Since 2022, he has also served as secretary of the Council of Discernment of the Interest of the System, a body that mediates relations between Parliament and the Council of Guardians, composed of clerics and jurists with the task of assessing the compatibility of laws with Islamic law.

His appointment came by decree of President Masoud Pezeshkian and with the endorsement of the Supreme Guide, Mojtaba Khamenei. Just like Khamenei, Zolghadr is very close to the hard line of the Pasdaran and brings with him decades of experience in Iran's military, security and judicial institutions. During his long militancy, he has already taken part in one conflict, the war with Iraq in the 1980s, and today he is called upon to play a crucial role in Tehran's security at a critical time, with the Islamic Republic denying negotiations with the United States and seeking to maximise the damage to its adversaries by striking at the region's energy infrastructure.