Mohsen Rezaei named Iran security council chief

Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has named Mohsen Rezaei, a former commander in chief of the Revolutionary Guards, to head the country's Supreme National Security Council, the Iranian presidency said Sunday.

Presidency spokesman Mehdi Tabatabaei said on X that Rezaei was appointed after Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr resigned as secretary of the council and was moved to new duties.

Rezaei, 71, led the Revolutionary Guards from 1981 to 1997, including for most of the Iran-Iraq war, and later held several senior political posts. He then served as military adviser to supreme leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei.

Zolghadr, also a former Guards commander, had led the council since March. The supreme leader's office said Sunday that he will become a political adviser to Khamenei.

Rezaei said in July that control of the Strait of Hormuz, now central to the conflict between Iran and the United States, was “more important than dozens of atomic bombs”.