
Iran names successor to security chief killed in US-Israeli attack
Al Jazeera
Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, ex-IRGC commander, to replace late Ali Larijani as chief of Supreme National Security Council.
Iran has named Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, a former commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), as the successor to Ali Larijani, head of the country’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), who was killed in a US-Israeli air strike earlier this month.
President Masoud Pezeshkian’s deputy of communications announced the appointment on X on Tuesday.
The SNSC, formally chaired by Pezeshkian, coordinates security and foreign policy and includes top military, intelligence and government officials, in addition to representatives of Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei.
Zolghadr, who served in the 1980s war against Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, went on to become head of the IRGC’s joint staff for eight years and then deputy commander-in-chief of the elite force for another eight years.
In 2005, he was named deputy interior minister for security and police in the government of then-President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, a move that was seen at the time as bolstering the IRGC’s influence in politics.













