The longtime hardliner is the new chief of the Supreme National Security Council to replace his slain predecessor Ali Larijani, state television said Tuesday.
Zolghadr is not a new figure emerging in a moment of crisis, but a product of the Islamic Republic’s original revolutionary security networks. A man whose career spans armed militancy, senior command within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and influential roles across Iran’s political and judicial institutions.
“He is one of the last remnants of the radical revolutionaries that armed themselves against the Pahlavi monarchy,” historian Shahram Kholdi told Iran International.
A former deputy commander of the IRGC, Zolghadr belongs to the generation that helped transform the Guards into the backbone of the Islamic Republic not only as a military force, but as a political and economic power center. Over decades, the IRGC expanded its reach across the state, embedding itself in key institutions from the interior ministry to the judiciary.
Kholdi traces Zolghadr back to the early networks that evolved into the Quds Force — the IRGC’s elite unit responsible for managing Iran’s proxy militias and projecting power across the Middle East placing him alongside the system later commanded by Qassem Soleimani, the architect of Iran’s regional strategy.
His appointment following the killing of Larijani underscores what many analysts see as an accelerating trend: the consolidation of power by hardline military figures. What has been a gradual shift over decades appears to have intensified amid the current conflict, with the Guards tightening their grip over both national security and political decision-making.
The Quds Force, the IRGC’s external arm, has been at the center of Iran’s regional power projection, training and directing militias from Iraq to Syria, where it helped sustain Bashar al-Assad’s war in a conflict marked by widespread civilian suffering.
“He is part of the three to four thousand families that have been forming the power core of the Islamic Republic,” Kholdi said.
Zolghadr’s rise does not mark a departure from that system, but a continuation of it, reflecting the enduring dominance of a tightly knit network of insiders drawn from the Islamic Republic’s revolutionary and security institutions.
His role in internal repression also stretches back decades. During the 1999 student protests — a pivotal moment in the regime’s violent suppression of dissent— Zolghadr was among a group of senior IRGC commanders who signed a sharply worded letter to then-reformist President Mohammad Khatami. The message warned that if the government failed to decisively crush the unrest, the Guards would act on their own. The episode is widely seen as a turning point, marking a more overt willingness by the IRGC to intervene directly in politics and, for many Iranians, cementing the reform movement’s ultimate failure.
His political trajectory has long aligned with Iran’s most hardline currents. He played a role in the rise of former hardline president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and later acknowledged that conservative factions had carried out coordinated efforts to secure that victory. In office, he adopted a confrontational posture toward the United States, warning that Iran would respond to any attack with overwhelming missile strikes.
During the Iran-Iraq War, he led units he fought in cross-border operations, which is experience that would help shape the regime’s enduring emphasis on asymmetrical warfare.
According to Kholdi, Zolghadr was among those who helped design that doctrine alongside figures like Qassem Soleimani — building a decentralized system capable of operating even under sustained attack.
“They created this asymmetrical hierarchy where units can act independently… and continue operating even if leadership is cut off,” Kholdi said.
That system is now visible in Iran’s military posture, with dispersed missile and drone capabilities across the region.
Kholdi also points to Zolghadr’s deep institutional knowledge as a key factor in his significance today.
“The fact that he hasn’t been eliminated is bad news — he is one of the main people who knows a lot about how this system works,” he said, adding that Zolghadr likely has insight into sensitive areas including the country’s nuclear program.
For ordinary Iranians, his rise is much the same as his predecessor Ali Larijani, who was eliminated in an Israeli airstrike overnight on March 16 in Tehran.
“No, he is much the same,” Kholdi said when asked whether Zolghadr differs from figures like Larijani.
His appointment underscores a consistent reality: power in the Islamic Republic remains concentrated within a small circle of entrenched insiders — many of whom have been at the center of the system since its earliest days.
