Who is Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, Iran’s new security chief after Ali Larijani

The government of Iran has named Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr the new secretary of its Supreme National Security Council. He replaced Ali Larijani, a senior official who had been heading the council before being assassinated by joint US-Israeli strikes on Iran.

The 72-year-old is a former commander of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC). He took charge on Tuesday. Before this appointment, he was serving as the secretary of Iran’s Expediency Council.

Who is Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr?
Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr was born in 1954 in Fasa, Iran. He studied economics at the University of Tehran.

Before the 1979 Iranian Revolution, he was linked to the Mansourun group, one of several Islamist militant networks that later became part of the new ruling system.

After 1979, he was associated with the Islamic Revolution Mojahedin Organisation (IRMO), a coalition of groups that had opposed the Shah, Iran’s former monarch.

The organisation helped strengthen the new government and took part in suppressing a 1981 uprising by the Mojahedin-e Khalq (MEK), an opposition group. By the mid-1980s, the organisation had split into factions.

During the Iran-Iraq war (1980-88), he was a senior commander of the IRGC. He also co-founded the Ramazan Garrison, which carried out cross-border missions and trained proxy forces, later linked to the formation of the Quds Force, the IRGC’s overseas wing.

After the war, he spent 16 years in top IRGC roles. He was head of the Joint Staff for eight years and later deputy commander-in-chief for another eight years.

In 2007, he was appointed deputy chief of the armed forces’ general staff for Basij-related affairs. The Basij is a volunteer militia. He later held senior roles in the Interior Ministry under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad.

Zolghadr, known as the IRGC’s ‘dark horse’, has also been linked to controversial episodes. He has been associated with the ‘chain murders’ of dissidents in the 1990s and the crackdown on student protests in 1999.

He was among the officials who opposed political reforms during the presidency of Mohammad Khatami.

Zolghadr was placed under UN sanctions over Iran’s nuclear and missile programmes, which were lifted on October 18, 2023.

In 2021, he became secretary of the Expediency Council, a body that advises Iran’s leadership and resolves disputes within the political system.

His wife, Sedigheh Begum Hejazi, has held a senior position in Iran’s cultural administration, while his son-in-law, Kazem Gharibabadi, has represented Iran at the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna.