The sudden change in the office of the secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), amid the volatile situation in the Gulf and with the Oman-Iran talks on the future of the Strait of Hormuz yet to produce a final arrangement, has implications that extend beyond Iran’s internal affairs.
The key appointment in fact signals a shift in the structure through which Tehran’s national security decisions are being processed and, potentially, a resetting of its game plan, even though there is little evidence so far of any change in the strategic objectives that have guided Iran through the conflict.
The replacement of Bagher Zolghadr by veteran Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander Mohsen Rezaei is significant because the SNSC, constituted under Article 176 of Iran’s Constitution, brings together the country’s top civilian, military and judicial leadership for deliberation on defence and foreign policy, with its decisions requiring confirmation by the Supreme Leader. Its secretary, however, is merely an administrative official controlling the Secretariat, setting the agenda, coordinating between state institutions, preparing policy options and implementing decisions.
But, what makes Rezaei’s appointment particularly consequential is that he has also been appointed the supreme leader’s representative on the Council, giving him a more powerful dual-hatted role that Zolghadr did not have. Rezaei will consequently have both control over the machinery through which national security policy is processed and a formal seat and vote on the Council as the leader’s representative, giving him a stronger institutional voice and a more direct channel to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei.
The shift importantly signals the rebalancing of power sharing arrangement that had emerged in Tehran after former supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s assassination.
One should not miss out that Zolghadr’s departure followed a mini controversy in Tehran over his reported resignation and President Masoud Pezeshkian’s “reluctance” to endorse Rezaei for the position.
The issue was apparently resolved after a rare meeting between Ayatollah Mojtaba and Pezeshkian, following which Khamenei appointed Rezaei as his representative on the SNSC, Zolghadr was moved to the position of the leader’s political adviser and Pezeshkian subsequently appointed Rezaei as secretary.
While there is no official confirmation that the meeting was convened over the SNSC dispute, the sequence makes it difficult to treat the episode as an ordinary bureaucratic change.
There is, however, a danger in reading the change simply as the triumph of what many see as ‘hardliners’ in Tehran over the ‘moderates’. Zolghadr himself was an IRGC figure, and his position on the Strait of Hormuz was not fundamentally different from that of Rezaei.
Both regard Iranian control or management of the waterway as a sovereign right and an important source of leverage against Washington, and both have linked any comprehensive reopening of the strait with an end to US military pressure, removal of the naval blockade, sanctions relief and the release of Iranian assets. The difference between the two is, therefore, less about the destination than about the authority and political weight of the person now responsible for managing the journey.
Rezaei brings to the position a standing that Zolghadr simply did not possess. Having commanded the IRGC from 1981 to 1997, including through most of the Iran-Iraq war, and subsequently headed the Expediency Discernment Council for more than two decades, he is deeply embedded in the security establishment and has considerable political experience. More importantly, he has been publicly involved in the present confrontation, repeatedly linking military deterrence with diplomacy and describing Hormuz as a strategic red line.
That makes the appointment particularly relevant to the unresolved Hormuz question as the negotiations with Oman have increasingly moved towards technical issues, including routing, monitoring, maritime services, environmental cooperation and possible fees, with Iranian officials indicating that progress has been made on the broad geography of a future shipping arrangement.
Yet Tehran has consistently maintained that reaching a technical understanding with Oman is not the same thing as restoring the Strait as a secure international waterway because, in its view, the larger problem was created by the US-Israeli military campaign and the presence of US forces around Iran.
This distinction could become more important under Rezaei because his record suggests that he is unlikely to allow the technical track to become detached from the political one. Oman can negotiate the mechanics of navigation with Iran, but that would not resolve the dispute between Tehran and Washington over the US blockade, military presence and the conditions under which commercial shipping can resume.
Rezaei is likely to insist that any operational reopening of Hormuz should produce demonstrable gains for Iran and that the military dimension should remain available as leverage.
This should not be read either as Iran having chosen confrontation over diplomacy. In fact, the more accurate reading is that Tehran will pursue both, but has placed a stronger security establishment figure to make tactical adjustments along the course. Rezaei has been deeply sceptical of Washington’s intentions, accusing the US of using negotiations to buy time and demanding tangible confidence-building measures, including the release of frozen Iranian assets, before Tehran returns to substantive negotiations.
Therefore, this change could make diplomacy more difficult in the short term, but it could also make a future negotiation more structured.
A negotiator with Rezaei’s military credentials may be better placed to sell an eventual compromise to Iran’s security establishment, provided Washington is prepared to offer reciprocal and verifiable concessions. If those concessions do not materialise, however, his presence could strengthen the argument within Tehran that negotiations are merely a US ruse for buying time while retaining military and economic pressure.
This is where the wider significance of the appointment lies. The June Islamabad Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) had already demonstrated the difficulty of separating the immediate question of Hormuz from the larger US-Iran confrontation.
Its ambiguities over navigation, sanctions, frozen assets and the sequencing of reciprocal measures eventually allowed both sides to accuse the other of violating the understanding. Iran’s subsequent position has increasingly been that navigation cannot be restored simply by resolving the technical arrangements with Oman while the US blockade and military pressure remain in place.
The path forward, therefore, is unlikely to be a single comprehensive breakthrough, but a plausible sequence would begin with an Iran-Oman technical arrangement on navigation, followed by reciprocal US steps concerning the blockade and Iranian commercial shipping, which could then create enough confidence for indirect or direct US-Iran negotiations to resume.
Only after that would the much more difficult issues of the nuclear program, sanctions, frozen assets and the wider regional security architecture become negotiable.
For Pakistan, which has invested considerable diplomatic capital in creating the Islamabad process, the development deserves close attention.
Islamabad’s interest is not simply in seeing ships move through Hormuz but in preventing the waterway from once again becoming the principal instrument of coercive competition between Iran and the US. Therefore, Rezaei’s appointment means that Tehran is now preparing for negotiations from a position of greater security establishment control and with greater emphasis on coercive leverage.
To put it simply, the hardline consensus on Hormuz in Tehran remains intact, but the person now responsible for translating that consensus into policy carries considerably greater military authority, political experience and institutional weight.
