Who Is Mohsen Rezaei? Iran’s Security Chief and Ex-IRGC Commander

Rezaei is the secretary of the Supreme National Security Council and the Supreme Leader’s representative on it. President Masoud Pezeshkian appointed him secretary on Sunday, August 9, 2026, and Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei named him his representative on the council by a separate decree the same day, citing his “valuable experience”. Pezeshkian’s decree asked him to put new and technological threats first.

The council sets Iran’s security and foreign policy. The president chairs it, and its members include the heads of the armed forces, the intelligence minister, the foreign minister and two representatives of the Supreme Leader. The secretary runs it day to day, and is the official foreign governments usually deal with on security.

Rezaei replaced Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, a former Guards commander who had held the post since March 2026. Zolghadr took over about a week after his predecessor, Ali Larijani, was killed in a U.S.-Israeli strike. Zolghadr moved on to become a political adviser to the Supreme Leader. Rezaei had already been serving as a military adviser to Mojtaba Khamenei before the appointment.

Yes. Rezaei was commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from September 1981 to September 1997. He took over at 27, a year into the 1980-1988 war with Iraq, and led the Guards through the rest of it. Before that he headed the Guards’ intelligence department.

Under his command the Guards grew from a revolutionary militia into a full military force with its own ground, naval and air arms. In 1988, as the war turned against Iran, Rezaei sent Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini an assessment that the war could not be won without far more men and weapons than Iran had. Khomeini accepted the UN ceasefire that July.

He was replaced in 1997 by Yahya Rahim Safavi, the year the reformist Mohammad Khatami became president. He holds the rank of major general.

He moved into politics and economics. From 1997 to 2021 he was secretary of the Expediency Discernment Council, the body that settles disputes between parliament and the Guardian Council and advises the Supreme Leader. He also earned a doctorate in economics from the University of Tehran.

Rezaei ran for president four times and never came close to winning. He withdrew from the 2005 race two days before the vote. In 2009 he came third with about 1.7 percent. In 2013 he came fourth with about 10.6 percent. In 2021 he came second with about 11.8 percent, far behind Ebrahim Raisi.

Raisi then made him vice president for economic affairs on August 25, 2021. He left that post in June 2023 after disputes inside the government’s economic team, and Raisi gave him a coordinating role between the heads of the three branches of government.

Argentina accuses him of a role in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people on July 18, 1994. An Argentine judge issued arrest warrants in 2006 for Rezaei and other Iranian officials, and Interpol’s General Assembly upheld red notices for him and four other Iranians in November 2007. Rezaei denies any part in the attack and has called the charge a lie. The notice has followed him abroad: Argentina asked for his arrest during foreign trips he made as vice president.

The United States also sanctions him. On January 10, 2020, the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Assets Control blocked his property under Executive Order 13876, which targets officials appointed by Iran’s Supreme Leader.

His line is consistent: the strait is Iran’s strongest card, and it stays closed until Washington pays a price. On July 12, 2026, a month before his appointment, he said the strait was “more important than dozens of atomic bombs” and called it one of Iran’s tools of deterrence. In early October he warned the United Arab Emirates that hosting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu would have consequences.

On October 20 he said: “There will be no negotiations until America takes steps to build trust.” A letter from U.S. Vice President JD Vance, reported on October 28 to be addressed to Rezaei, reached Tehran; Iran confirmed receipt on October 29 and has not answered it in public. Why Washington wrote to him rather than to the foreign minister is the subject of our analysis of the post-midterm options.

On November 3 he said the U.S. response was not convincing and that the strait reopens only when the seven conditions are met in full. Iranian officials have repeatedly named four of them: a regional ceasefire that includes Lebanon, the release of frozen Iranian assets, a waiver of oil sanctions and an end to the U.S. naval blockade. The full record of the demands is in our explainer on Iran’s seven conditions, and the strait’s daily status is in our Hormuz tracker.

Rezaei was born in 1954 in Masjed Soleyman, an oil town in Iran’s southwestern Khuzestan province, which makes him 72 in November 2026. He enrolled to study mechanical engineering in Tehran in 1974 and joined the movement against the Shah before the 1979 revolution.

Mohsen Rezaei was born in 1954 in Masjed Soleyman, Khuzestan province.

He commanded the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps from 1981 to 1997.

He was secretary of the Expediency Discernment Council from 1997 to 2021.

He ran for president four times: he withdrew in 2005 and lost in 2009, 2013 and 2021, when he came second with about 11.8 percent.

He was vice president for economic affairs from August 2021 to June 2023.

Interpol has listed him under a red notice since 2007 over the 1994 AMIA bombing, which he denies.

The U.S. Treasury sanctioned him on January 10, 2020.

He became secretary of the Supreme National Security Council on August 9, 2026, and on November 3, 2026, he said the Strait of Hormuz stays closed until the U.S. meets Iran’s seven conditions.