Mohammad Bagher Zolqadr | Ascent of the Guardsman

When Hamas launched its cross-border assault on Israel on October 7, 2023, killing no less than 1,200 individuals, Mohammad Bagher Zolqadr, then Secretary of Iran’s Expediency Council, referred to as it a “turning level” for Palestinians. “This operation is the start line of the autumn of the Zionist regime,” he mentioned. The chain of occasions triggered by the assault has now led to a full-blown Israeli-American struggle on Iran. The battle has introduced the 72-year-old former commander of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) to the centre of Iran’s safety decision-making.

After the U.S. and Israel launched the struggle on February 28, by killing Ali Khamenei, Iran’s Supreme Chief, and several other different leaders, Ali Larijani, Secretary of the Supreme Nationwide Safety Council, emerged because the face of the Iranian state and defiance. Larijani was already probably the most highly effective males within the Islamic Republic. A ‘principalist’ himself who had shut ties to Ali Khamenei, Larijani was an inflluential ink between Iran’s army institution and its political class. On March 17, Larijani was assassinated by an Israeli air strike. Seven days later, President Masoud Pezeshkian appointed Mr. Zolqadr as Larijani’s successor. As Secretary of the Safety Council, he’s anticipated to play a big function in key safety decision-making at a time when the state is preventing a struggle of survival.

Mr. Zolqadr belongs to a era of Guardsmen related to the ‘Mansouroun’ community, an Islamist militant organisation which contributed influential figures to the IRGC reminiscent of Mohsen Rezaei, Ali Shamkhani and Gholam Ali Rashid.

After the 1979 revolution which overthrew the Shah’s monarchy, Mr. Zolqadr joined one of many revolutionary committees. After Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, backed by Persian Gulf monarchies, invaded Iran in 1980, Mr. Zolqadr, like a lot of his comrades in Mansouroun, joined the Ramadan Headquarters, which was accountable for the IRGC’s exterior operations, significantly coordinating with Iraqi Kurdish and Shia teams that have been against Saddam’s rule.

The Ramadan Headquarters later turned the Quds Drive, the exterior arm of the Guards.

By the point the struggle led to 1988, the IRGC had emerged as probably the most highly effective establishments of the Islamic Republic. When Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani turned President (1989-1997), Mr. Zolqadr headed the IRGC Joint Employees. Rafsanjani was adopted by Mohammad Khatami, a reformist President. Mr. Zolqadr was among the many IRGC commanders who wrote a letter to Mr. Khatami, asking him to take motion in opposition to student-led protests within the late Nineteen Nineties. The protests have been crushed.

The Basic’s risk

Within the 2005 Presidential election, Mr. Zolqadr aligned with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. “We carried out a multilayered plan to assist Ahmadinejad win,” Mr. Zolqadr later mentioned. Mr. Ahmadinejad appointed Mr. Zolqadr, who was the Deputy Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC, as a Deputy Inside Minister. He then warned that if the U.S. have been to assault Iran, Tehran would “fireplace tens of hundreds of missiles at American targets on daily basis and threaten Israel as America’s backstop”.

In 2010, Mr. Zolqadr was appointed as a senior aide to Iran’s judiciary chief Sadegh Larijani, the brother of Ali Larijani. Since September 2022, he had been serving because the Secretary of the Expediency Council, an administrative meeting appointed by the Supreme Chief. Whereas its constitutional duty is to resolve any variations between the Majles and the 12-member Guardian Council, which has a veto over payments handed by the Meeting, the Expediency Council additionally acts as an advisory physique to the Supreme Chief.

In March 2024, Mr. Zolqadr had mentioned that the Guards ought to exert larger management over the nation. In Iran’s advanced energy construction, the army institution, the clerical management and elected politicians all wield affect. Whereas the IRGC has lengthy been the spine of Iran’s armed forces, different branches of the state have additionally performed key roles in operating the nation.

The struggle, nevertheless, seems to have shifted the steadiness additional in the direction of the Guards, who report on to the Supreme Chief. Larijani was a politician with hyperlinks to the IRGC, however Mr. Zolqadr is a Guardsman with political attain. Together with his ascent to the publish of the Secretary of the Safety Council, the IRGC has additional tightened its grip on Iran’s state equipment.