Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei formally appointed six senior military commanders Monday, cementing a wartime reshuffle as Tehran rebuilds a command structure impacted by months of U.S. and Israeli strikes.
The appointments, announced by Khamenei’s office and promoted on social media, fill posts across Iran’s armed forces, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Basij paramilitary force, with a counterterrorism expert warning the timing and language of the decrees signal Tehran is preparing for "prolonged confrontation" and not a settlement with Washington.
"Strategically, the announcements made were issued in English, on X, while Iranian and Omani negotiators finalize the coordinates of a proposed shipping route through Hormuz, which is deliberate sequencing," Dr. sanctions or allegations tied to terrorism and violent crackdowns.
Vahidi is the subject of an Ali Khamenei, who had served as supreme leader since 1989, was killed in a Feb. 28 strike at the start of the war. Mojtaba Khamenei, was selected as Iran’s new supreme leader in March.
Ali Larijani, then secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council and a major figure in the country’s security and foreign policy establishment, and Gholamreza Soleimani, commander of the Basij, were killed in strikes on March 17.
The latest appointments come amid continuing questions about Mojtaba Khamenei’s health and public absence.
President Masoud Pezeshkian claimed Monday that he had held a nearly seven-hour meeting with Khamenei, only the second meeting the president has publicly disclosed since the new supreme leader took office, intelligence apparatus, according to Mohammed.
"The IRGC Intelligence Organization and its counterintelligence arm have no announced chiefs, and Iran has no permanent defense or intelligence ministers," the expert said.
"The appointments require assigning responsibility for the counterintelligence failures that enabled the February decapitation.
"Whoever wins that argument — the supreme leader’s circle or the Guard’s institutional leadership — is the actor actually in control."