Iran's supreme leader elevates military veterans willing to confront the US

Iran's supreme leader elevates military veterans willing to confront the US

By Tim Lister, Mitchell McCluskey

Updated Aug 11, 2026, 11:25 AM ET

US President Donald Trump has boasted that his war in Iran has led to a "very rational," "very different," and "much more reasonable" leadership in Tehran. But the elevation of six hardliners to top security positions this week suggests the Islamic Republic's new command may be neither moderate nor inclined to compromise.

The men now rising through the security establishment have spent their careers confronting enemies abroad and suppressing dissent at home.

The announcement of the senior appointments, purportedly made by Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei on Monday, followed the naming of a new national security chief, Mohsen Rezaie, a day earlier.

Experts say the changes mark a shift in approach compared to the more cautious tone under Mojtaba's father, Ali Khamenei, who was supreme leader until assassinated by Israel at the start of the war.

It is both more aggressive toward external enemies and more vigilant toward internal dissent.

There are two parallel priorities, says Hamidreza Azizi at the Clingendael Institute, a think tank in the Netherlands: preparing the state for a more confrontational external environment and further securitizing the domestic sphere.

"The emphasis on offensive operations, unified command, and faster decision-making suggests that the leadership wants to move from Ali Khamenei's traditionally more cautious approach to deterrence toward what could be described as offensive deterrence," Azizi told CNN.

Most of the appointees have a background in intelligence, according to Saeid Golkar, associate professor of political science at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga.

"The picture we are seeing is the Islamic Republic moving toward a security-dominated bureaucratic regime," he told CNN.

The reshuffle reinforces the regime's "current maximalist and hardline positions," according to the Institute for the Study of War, a Washington-based think tank, "including absolute Iranian control of the Strait of Hormuz, the removal of US troops from the region, and the development of Iran's nuclear program."

Hossein Taeb - a close ally of Mojtaba Khamenei - "was a particularly controversial and divisive figure during his tenure as head of IRGC Intelligence, closely associated with the hardline security apparatus's repression of dissent," wrote Sina Toossi, senior fellow at the Center for International Policy, on X.

Given his long absence from public view, analysts are unsure whether Khamanei is indeed the architect of the new set-up.

But the combination of Taeb, Rezaei, Ahmad Vahidi - now commander of the IRGC - and other security veterans "indicates a leadership increasingly relying on experienced intelligence and military figures to consolidate the system after the war," Azizi told CNN.

"It is not a complete break with Ali Khamenei's approach, but it does represent a harder and more explicitly confrontational version of it."