The ascension of Mohsen Rezaei as secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council underscores that there is much political drama beneath the surface of the Islamic Republic’s portrayal of strength as the Trump administration tries to end the war.
The resignation of Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, the former deputy commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), from the SNSC positions his tenure as secretary as the shortest in the history of the Islamic Republic.
Zolghadr was demoted, becoming a political advisor to the supreme leader. Rezaei's appointment demonstrates both the militarization and fragmentation of the Islamic Republic’s elite.
The careers of Rezaei and Zolghadr have multiple parallels. Zolghadr served under Rezaei when he was commander-in-chief of the IRGC. Zolghadr was Rezaei’s chief of the IRGC’s joint staff.
Both men later became secretary of the Expediency Council, which advises the supreme leader and arbitrates disputes between parliament and the Guardian Council, after their long tenures in the IRGC’s top brass. The Expediency Council has traditionally been used by Iran’s supreme leaders as a landing spot for the old guard after service in more consequential positions.
The return of these figures to Iran’s top ranks reflects the hollowing out of the Islamic Republic’s military leadership following US and Israeli airstrikes in 2025 and 2026.
This is not Rezaei’s first stint on the SNSC. As commander-in-chief of the IRGC, he served as an SNSC member. But the last time he was officially part of its deliberations was in 1997.
In becoming secretary of the SNSC, he is the first former IRGC commander-in-chief to serve as secretary. He joins Ahmad Vahidi, the current IRGC chief, who was Quds Force commander under Rezaei’s tenure at the helm of the Guards, who holds a seat on the SNSC.
Rezaei also has a long history with another SNSC member Speaker of Parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf, who rose through the ranks of the IRGC—as deputy commander of the fearsome Basij and commander of the Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters—under Rezaei’s leadership. In 1997, when Rezaei departed from the IRGC’s top position, Ghalibaf signed a letter to Rezaei praising him as a “mentor.”
Both Ghalibaf and Rezaei have also been political rivals, unsuccessfully running against each other as candidates for president, for example in 2013. With a supreme leader who has largely been inaccessible and invisible to most in Iran, this sets-up the prospect of clashes within the SNSC, especially as both men have seen themselves as destined for higher office.
Like Zolghadr, Rezaei is also a hardline actor. But Rezaei has exhibited more political competitiveness than his predecessor, having run for office whereas Zolghadr spent most of his career embedded in military and security institutions.
Ghalibaf, however, could be bolstered on the SNSC with the appointment of Ali Abdollahi as chief of staff of Iran’s Armed Forces. Abdollahi served as a longtime deputy of Ghalibaf, when Ghalibaf headed the IRGC’s Air Force and Iran’s Police. Therefore, while Rezaei’s appointment can be seen as a check on Ghalibaf, the latter is not necessarily losing his influence.
Rezaei’s appointment as SNSC secretary is also likely a blow to President Masoud Pezeshkian. Traditionally, despite presidential decrees appointing the SNSC secretary, in practice, the supreme leader decides the fate of the position.
Given Rezaei’s being a longtime fixture in conservative politics in Iran, it can be safely assumed that he was not the reformist Pezeshkian’s first choice for the position. These dynamics further marginalize Pezeshkian and his Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi. Just days ago, Iranian media reported that Pezeshkian had refused Zolghadr’s resignation as SNSC secretary.
Rezaei’s views may also lead to disagreements with Pezeshkian’s camp, which is more focused on returning to the MOU than dragging negotiations out to build deterrence and achieve a better deal.
In a 2015 state television appearance, Rezaei proclaimed that “we’ll take 1,000 Americans hostage. America will have to pay several billions to get every single one freed. This is how we can solve our economic problems.”
Rezaei’s ascension continues the trend of the SNSC being populated by men steeped in asymmetric tactics against the United States, like terrorism. Zolghadr previously commanded the IRGC’s Ramadan Headquarters which later morphed into the Quds Force.
Rezaei oversaw a particularly active period of IRGC terror plots when he was leading the IRGC—for example the bombings of the Israeli embassy in Argentina in 1992, a Jewish community center in Buenos Aires in 1994, and Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia which killed 19 American servicemembers in 1996.
INTERPOL issued a Red Notice for Rezaei at Argentina’s request over his alleged involvement in the 1994 AMIA bombing.
Vahidi also participated in the deliberations which led to these attacks and was likewise the suject of an INTERPOL Red Notice. Thus, Iran’s SNSC will now feature two men who are the subject of an INTERPOL Red Notice.
Before, especially under Ali Khamenei’s tenure, softer faces more palatable to the international community served as secretary. Now, the Islamic Republic is broadcasting the rogue nature of the regime—a signal of its overconfidence, which is dangerous.
This raises questions over Iran’s future trajectory with respect to developing nuclear weapons—especially as it’s using the tussle over the Strait of Hormuz as a shield from having to make concessions on its nuclear program.
When he was commander-in-chief of the IRGC, Rezaei was quoted in a 1988 assessment sent to Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani and later relayed to then-Supreme Leader Ruhollah Khomeini as suggesting that nuclear weapons, among other arms, would be needed if Khomeini chose to continue the Iran-Iraq War, which was depleting the Iranian state.
He did recognize the limits of the Islamic Republic’s power at the time—reportedly telling Khomeini that “there are no victories forthcoming in the next five years” without such weaponry. Although, for now, Rezaei appears content with leveraging the Strait of Hormuz, dubbing Iran’s control over it “more important than dozens of nuclear bombs.”
In the end, Rezaei’s ascension may lead to growing disagreements within the Islamic Republic’s establishment. It also reflects the continued domination—which started before the war—of the IRGC in decision-making.
Rezaei’s predecessors as secretary of the pre-war SNSC, include Ali Shamkhani, who headed the IRGC’s Navy, and Ali Akbar Ahmadian, a longtime IRGC commander himself. Rezaei being elevated at this time is telling given his role in past crises during wartime.
The work, underway in District 12, Baharestan Square and 30 Tir Street, is presented by municipal officials as a routine measure to ease congestion, carried out at the request of the traffic police.
Critics in architecture and urban sociology argue it cannot be read as a merely technical decision, and belongs instead to a long historical tradition: the use of urban design as an instrument of control.
When the city takes away the barricade
The link between redrawing a city's body and engineering its security is not new. Its most famous case is the great reconstruction of nineteenth-century Paris, carried out by Baron Haussmann on the orders of Napoleon III.
Until the 1850s, Paris was a city of narrow, winding, organic streets that let protesting citizens pry up the paving stones, throw up barricades and take control of their own neighborhoods, the world Victor Hugo drew so vividly in Les Misérables.
By demolishing the old fabric and driving broad, straight, uniform boulevards through it, Haussmann pursued two entwined goals: to strip the public of the ability to barricade the streets, and to ease the rapid movement of troops and heavy artillery for the suppression of unrest.
Later theorists built the insight into the foundations of urban thought. Walter Benjamin in The Arcades Project and David Harvey in his work on the "right to the city" traced how space itself becomes a tool for reproducing ruling power and erasing the protester's presence from it.
Physical disarmament of public space
The replacement of segmented paving blocks with continuous asphalt functions, in effect, as the physical disarmament of the urban environment. Unlike uniform asphalt, cobblestones can be pried loose in a street confrontation, handing demonstrators ready material for barricades or for holding back advancing security forces.
Beyond removing potential projectiles, the smooth surface answers the operational needs of motorized units. Pedestrian infrastructure, with its uneven paving, varying widths, benches and street furniture, slows vehicles down. Coating these zones in asphalt creates uninterrupted corridors for special forces, water cannons and high-speed motorcycle patrols.
Eradicating gathering points
The repaving projects coincide with heightened enforcement against public gathering spaces in central districts, including the sealing of outdoor cafes and the removal of street furniture.
Pedestrian-friendly designs naturally create pause points where citizens congregate, engage in conversation, and form initial nodes of public assembly.
Converting pedestrian hubs into vehicular thoroughfares prioritizes rapid transit over civic presence, reshaping central public areas into channels designed for continuous traffic flow.
The removal of seating and outdoor dining areas reinforces this operational shift by eliminating physical spaces that encourage citizens to linger.
Reclaiming the street
Public thoroughfares have consistently served as primary arenas for civil expression during periods of political tension in Iran.
Highlighting the symbolic and practical weight of public space, prominent Iranian actress Hedieh Tehrani addressed security forces in a public message during the 2022 nationwide protests, writing, "My only way of communicating with the people is the street."
Similarly, exiled Prince Reza Pahlavi emphasized the importance of public thoroughfares during his calls for widespread demonstrations in January 2026, framing the reclamation of street spaces as a central objective for people.
Replacing historical pedestrian infrastructure with asphalt prioritizes security deterrence and vehicular velocity over civic life and urban heritage. By converting public gathering hubs back into high-speed transit corridors, municipal authorities reduce public space from a venue for civic engagement into an infrastructure designed to prevent assembly.
In the study of migration and bilingualism, Persian is, for many children of Iranian immigrants, a heritage language: a language passed down through family and cultural background while another language dominates their schooling and social world.
The term is not the same as mother tongue. A mother tongue is usually the first language learned in childhood; a heritage language may lose its dominant place very early, sometimes before the child can read a word of it.
For Iranians, this is not merely a question of language teaching. More than four decades of political, social and economic emigration have built a multigenerational society outside Iran, one now entering its third generation.
The question is no longer how many Persian words the children know. It is how much of the language, the family memory and the direct connection to Iran will reach the generations after them.
One generation weakens a language; the next can lose it
Starting school is one of the deepest turning points in a child's linguistic life. The host country's language is not just the language of lessons; it becomes the language of friendship, play, jokes, music, the internet and most of the child's social world. Even in a family where the parents speak Persian at home, the real share of Persian in the child's day shrinks, steadily and without anyone deciding it should.
Studies of Iranian families abroad find the same gap from the parents' side. In interviews conducted by sociolinguist Khadij Gharibi and her colleagues with Iranian households in the United Kingdom and New Zealand, and in similar research in the Netherlands, parents express a deep commitment to passing Persian on; one parent in the UK study put it simply: "You are Iranian even if you were born on the moon." Yet the same studies document a persistent distance between what parents believe and what daily practice at home actually delivers.
The shift rarely happens suddenly. First the child understands Persian and answers in Persian. Then she still understands her parents but replies in the dominant language. Later, Persian narrows to family matters and daily routine, while feelings, schoolwork and personal disputes migrate to the other language.
Nor are understanding, speaking, reading and writing a single skill. A person may understand Persian almost completely yet grope for words when speaking, or speak fluently yet be unable to read a simple text. At that point, direct access to Persian literature, media, history and much of the written world of the language closes too.
The experience of other immigrant communities shows how deep the shift can run within two or three generations, a pattern sociolinguists have described since Joshua Fishman's classic model of three-generation language loss.
In the United States, 89 percent of first-generation Latino youth and 79 percent of the second generation report speaking Spanish well; in the third generation the figure falls to 38 percent, and only 26 percent report strong reading and writing.
Canadian data show the shift happening inside the family itself: in households where both immigrant parents shared the same non-official mother tongue, 24.4 percent of children used only English or French at home, against 2.5 percent of their parents.
These numbers are not about Iranians and cannot be transferred to them directly. But the pattern they draw is unambiguous: a language's strength in the first generation is no guarantee it will reach the third.
When the shared language shrinks, the hard conversations shrink with it
The consequences are not only cultural. One of the most consequential facts of immigrant family life is the gap that can open between the linguistic reach of parents and children.
A child usually learns the host country's language faster and deeper than her parents do. A father or mother may handle the new language perfectly well for work and errands, yet still feel a memory, an emotion or a complicated thought most precisely in Persian. The child may lack sufficient Persian in exactly those places.
In childhood the gap barely shows. School, food and tomorrow's plans need only a narrow band of language. Adolescence demands other conversations: anxiety, love, identity, discrimination, gender, politics, the future, the family's own disputes.
A shrinking common language does not by itself produce a family crisis, and the difficulties of immigrant families cannot be reduced to language. Economics, the migration experience itself, generational difference and social pressures all play their part. But the more complicated the conversation, the more the linguistic ceiling makes itself felt.
In Iranian families, the bond with the older generation carries its own weight. A child with limited Persian can manage daily talk with her grandparents. Hearing the story of a life, the memory of an emigration, an argument about history, is harder.
For a community whose modern experience is knotted together with revolution, war, repression, protest and wave after wave of departure, this is not only about preserving literature and culture. Language is one of the principal carriers of family and historical memory. The narrower it becomes, the more the next generation's access to its own family's lived experience will depend on summaries, and on translation.
The third generation: who will teach Persian, and with which Iran?
About the coming generations there is still no comprehensive data. Nobody knows how many Iranian children abroad understand Persian, how many speak it, how many can read and write it. Even the size of the diaspora resists precise measurement, because countries classify people differently, by birthplace, citizenship, ancestry, ethnicity or language.
Yet the third generation's challenge is already visible in outline. The first generation typically carried complete Persian out of Iran. The second may hold a reduced version: strong comprehension, weaker speech, little literacy. When that generation becomes parents, its narrower Persian is no longer a private matter; it directly constrains what can be passed to the next child.
For Iranians, teaching the language carries a political complication too. Many immigrant families are caught between the need to preserve Persian and their distrust of institutions that are official, or tied to the Islamic Republic. Not everyone has access to a Persian school, and some parents refuse to let their child's language lessons come bundled with religious instruction, ideological content or the state's official narrative of Iran's history and identity.
So the question is not only how Persian should be taught. It is who teaches it, with what content, and with which image of Iran.
A few hours of weekend class will not carry a language on their own. A language survives when a child has reasons to use it: books and media made for her age, friendships with other Persian speakers, and the ability to talk in Persian not only about home and food, but about her own world.
For part of the second generation, Persian is still the language of home but no longer the language of life. For the third, the question is more fundamental: will Persian remain the language of home at all?
That question is not only about the survival of a language. Its answer will decide how directly generations who may never live in Iran can reach their family's memory, their people's modern history and the Iranian experience itself; whether Iran, for them, will be a land whose language they know, or a story that always arrives in translation.
