Iran on Tuesday appointed a former high-ranking Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander as the new secretary of its Supreme National Security Council (SNRC) after Israel killed Ali Larijani, the country’s previous national security chief.
According to Iran’s PressTV, Larijani’s replacement, Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr, served in the IRGC during the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, when the US backed Saddam Hussein against the Islamic Republic, and rose through the ranks of the guard, eventually serving as its deputy commander-in-chief.
“Zolqadr now takes the helm of the country’s highest security decision-making body, at a critical juncture as Iran navigates the war imposed by the US and the Israeli regime,” the PressTV report said.
Larijani had a history of favoring diplomacy with the US, and Zolqadr’s appointment follows a pattern in the current war of senior Iranian officials killed by Israel being replaced by officials much less likely to pursue negotiations with the US or Israel. Iran’s new supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, took power after losing not only his father, but also his mother, wife, sister, and son in an Israeli airstrike launched as part of the opening attacks of the war.
President Trump has claimed that there have been talks between the US and Iran, but that has been strongly denied by Iranian officials, who say they don’t seek a ceasefire and are ready to continue fighting, a viewpoint reaffirmed by a senior Iranian military commander on Tuesday.
Maj. Gen. Ali Abdollahi, commander of the Iranian military’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, vowed that Tehran was ready to fight until “complete victory” and said that the US and Israel failed in their goal to destroy Iran.
“The fake powers, notably the United States, which for decades exploited the oppressed nations of the world, particularly Islamic countries, through threats and intimidation, have now been brought to their knees before the eyes of the world with divine assistance,” Abdollahi said.
