Tehran Governor Mohammad Sadegh Motamedian, a former intelligence official accused of overseeing deadly repression of protesters, has emerged as a potential intelligence minister as Iran considers opening the position to non-clerics.
Fars News has identified him as a leading candidate if lawmakers remove the religious qualification for the post.
Motamedian previously headed Intelligence Ministry offices in West Azerbaijan and Ilam provinces, according to a 2021 profile by the Tasnim news agency. Born in Kermanshah in 1970, he holds a master's degree in management and has no clerical background.
He became governor of South Khorasan in November 2018, moved to Razavi Khorasan in October 2020 and took charge of West Azerbaijan in October 2021.
President Masoud Pezeshkian's cabinet appointed him Tehran governor in October 2024. His successive appointments under Hassan Rouhani, Ebrahim Raisi and Pezeshkian demonstrate his ability to retain senior office across administrations with different political identities.
What is his record on repression?
The most detailed public allegations against Motamedian concern his tenure in West Azerbaijan during the 2022 Woman, Life, Freedom uprising.
Justice for Iran's Faces of Crime database holds him responsible, in his capacity as governor and chairman of the provincial security council, for mass arrests and the use of lethal force against protesters.
The organization documented at least 56 protester deaths in the province and reported violence in cities including Urmia, Bukan, Mahabad, Piranshahr and Takab.
Why would the law need to change?
The existing qualification requires the intelligence minister to have religious education at the level of ijtihad, the ability to independently interpret Islamic law.
Established in legislation rather than the constitution, the requirement has kept the ministry's leadership in clerical hands. Motamedian's non-clerical background makes its removal central to his prospects.
Supporters of changing the rule argue that intelligence expertise and managerial competence should take precedence.
Former culture minister Ezzatollah Zarghami publicly backed reconsidering the requirement, while parliamentary national security committee deputy Amir Hayat-Moqaddam said its removal would allow non-clerical intelligence specialists to be considered.
The debate has gained urgency since Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib was killed in an Israeli attack in March. The ministry has since operated under an acting head.
Would a non-cleric have greater independence?
The proposed changes would create two bodies inside the ministry: an intelligence protection organization and an ideological-political organization, both headed by appointees of the supreme leader.
Parliamentary spokesman Abbas Goudarzi said on November 10 that the expedited proposal would reach the chamber the following week. The president would still nominate the minister for parliamentary approval.
The proposal would therefore broaden eligibility for the minister's job while formalizing direct oversight by the supreme leader through the two new bodies.
For Motamedian, it could remove a barrier to promotion without necessarily giving the next intelligence minister greater independence from the supreme leader.
Armenia’s parliamentary approval of the Trump Route, a US-run transit corridor running along Iran’s northern border, has set off alarm in Tehran, with officials and state media warning that it would bring a US presence to the frontier.
Armenia’s parliament approved the agreement on October 28. Since then, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader has threatened Yerevan, and state-run media have urged Tehran to stop the project.
The Trump Route for International Peace and Prosperity (TRIPP) is designed to link Azerbaijan to its exclave of Nakhchivan through Armenia’s southern Syunik province. Syunik borders Iran’s East Azarbaijan province and carries Iran’s only direct land connection to Armenia, and through it to the rest of the Caucasus.
The route was announced at the White House in August 2025, when President Donald Trump hosted Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev and Armenia’s Prime Minister Nikol Pashinyan to sign a framework for peace between the two countries after decades of conflict.
Azerbaijan had long called the route the Zangezur corridor, and Tehran had opposed it for years, warning that it could cut Iran off from Armenia.
Under the agreement, Washington and Yerevan will set up a joint company, TRIPP Development, with the US side holding 74 percent and Armenia 26 percent. The initial term is 49 years, with an option to extend it by 50 years, during which Armenia’s stake would rise to 49 percent.
Iranian officials and analysts say TRIPP could cut Iran’s transit revenue and weaken its position as a regional transport hub. They also see a US presence near Iran’s northern border as a serious security threat.
The state-run Mehr News Agency, in a November 9 article titled “The Caucasus on the Path to US Influence: Tehran Must Prevent Implementation of the TRIPP Corridor,” said Iran should rethink its approach to the Caucasus in light of what it called the country’s “new position in regional equations” after the war with the United States and Israel.
“A different approach centered on power,” Mehr said, could stop activities that threaten Iran’s national security from spreading in the South Caucasus.
Ali Akbar Velayati, an adviser to Iran’s supreme leader on international affairs and a former foreign minister, attacked Pashinyan over the agreement in an article in the Ettela’at newspaper on November 5.
Velayati said he had told Armenia’s deputy foreign minister and its ambassador in Tehran that Russia’s preoccupation with the war in Ukraine should not lead Armenia into a “miscalculation.” Iran, he said, considered itself responsible for security in the South Caucasus, “with or without Russia.”
Iranian military commanders later traveled to the region and held a large exercise to show Iran’s “power and determination,” Velayati said. He said he had warned Armenia’s ambassador directly: “If Trump and his allies seek to cross this red line of Iran, we will break their legs.”
Armenia’s Security Council secretary, Armen Grigoryan, said in response that the project did not involve the presence of a single armed soldier, and that none of Armenia’s neighbors, Iran included, should see an economic project as a threat.
Iran’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Esmaeil Baghaei, said on Monday that Tehran had raised its concerns with Armenia immediately after Armenia, Azerbaijan and the United States issued their joint statement on the project.
Armenia had assured Iran that the route would not change international borders or the region’s geopolitical arrangements, and that no US military forces would be stationed there, he said.
Hardline media have kept up their attacks despite Armenia’s assurances.
On November 9, Jam-e Jam, a newspaper published by the state broadcaster, ran an article titled “Yerevan’s Gamble with Trump’s Card.”
“From the perspective of Iran’s national security doctrine, the emergence of an economic and administrative structure under US control in Syunik province, even if initially presented under the guise of transit and trade, is unacceptable,” the paper wrote.
Security threats do not have to begin with military bases, Jam-e Jam said. Strategic infrastructure and networks tied to hostile powers can lay the ground for long-term influence.
Mehdi Seif-Tabrizi, an analyst of Russian affairs, made a similar case in the Farhikhtegan newspaper on November 7.
“Tehran’s concern is fundamentally not limited to the possible deployment of US military forces. The issue is the formation of permanent infrastructure for influence in the vicinity of Iran’s borders, which could serve purposes beyond its initial economic objectives in times of crisis,” he wrote.
Iran’s concerns had grown more serious since its war with the United States, he added.
A proposal to merge Iran's Intelligence Ministry with the Revolutionary Guards' powerful intelligence organisation is gaining traction, reviving debate over the rivalry between the two agencies and the future of the country's security apparatus.
The issue has drawn renewed attention in the reformist newspaper Etemad, which is close to President Masoud Pezeshkian's administration.
In an article published Thursday, the newspaper examined proposals reportedly discussed in senior state consultations to consolidate the two agencies into a more unified and accountable intelligence structure.
Iran's Intelligence Ministry remains without a permanent chief nearly eight months after Esmail Khatib was killed in an Israeli strike in March, while parliament considers separate legislation to overhaul the ministry's leadership.
The two agencies have long operated alongside one another, with overlapping responsibilities and competing centres of authority.
A history of rivalry
Iran's intelligence apparatus encompasses several organisations, but the Intelligence Ministry and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Intelligence Organisation are its two most prominent institutions.
The ministry operates within the government, with its chief nominated by the president and approved by parliament. The IRGC's intelligence arm belongs to a military organisation operating under the supreme leader's command.
Their competing authority has occasionally produced disagreements over investigations and the treatment of detainees.
During the late 2010s, one prominent dispute involved environmental activists arrested by the IRGC Intelligence Organisation on espionage charges. Another concerned more than 50 people reportedly accused of spying for Israel.
In both cases, the Intelligence Ministry publicly challenged allegations advanced by the IRGC Intelligence Organisation.
Some former detainees subsequently told Iranian and Persian-language media outside the country that the ministry had apologised for their detention and offered compensation.
A sensitive debate
Writing in Etemad, journalist Mehdi Beik-Oghli examined longstanding concerns about overlapping mandates, institutional rivalries and legal accountability within Iran's intelligence system.
His analysis also explored the qualifications required for senior intelligence officials and the difficulties of maintaining separate security institutions with overlapping responsibilities.
Etemad is widely regarded as one of the newspapers closest to Pezeshkian's administration. Its proprietor, Elias Hazrati, serves as a senior government media adviser.
The article does not establish whether a merger has been formally proposed by the government or endorsed by senior decision-makers, but its publication brings a sensitive question about Iran's intelligence establishment into a prominent government-aligned newspaper.
Leadership vacuum
Iran's parliament is preparing to consider separate legislation that could fundamentally change the leadership structure of the Intelligence Ministry.
Parliamentary presidium spokesman Abbas Goudarzi said Tuesday that an urgent bill would remove the longstanding requirement for the intelligence minister to possess ijtihad, an advanced qualification in Islamic jurisprudence.
Since the ministry's establishment in 1984, all its permanent ministers have been clerics.
The proposed legislation would allow a non-cleric to take the position while establishing two new organisations within the ministry, responsible for internal security and ideological affairs.
Their directors would be appointed directly by Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, while the intelligence minister would continue to be nominated by the president and approved by parliament.
Goudarzi said the changes would help resolve the leadership vacancy following Khatib's death. The ministry has been run by an acting minister whose identity has not been publicly disclosed.
The proposed legislation has yet to receive parliamentary approval, and it remains unclear whether the eventual selection of a new minister would favour career intelligence officials or figures associated with the Revolutionary Guards.
While the parliamentary proposal would retain the ministry and alter its leadership arrangements, the merger discussion goes further, raising the possibility of consolidating institutions that have operated as competing centres of security authority for decades.
Neither proposal has been adopted, and no decision to merge the intelligence agencies has been announced.
Iran's Assembly of Experts, a body of Islamic jurists tasked with choosing the supreme leader, has become the first governing institution to call for a review of the country's defense doctrine, potentially paving the way for a reversal of the religious ban on nuclear weapons.
In a statement released on Thursday, the assembly called for reviewing Iran's membership in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and its defense doctrine to establish adequate deterrence, describing the move as an “unavoidable necessity” and a “public and national demand.”
The intervention carries particular religious significance because the assembly comprises senior clerics, some of whom are qualified to exercise independent Islamic legal reasoning. Their support for reconsidering the doctrine could help weaken the religious justification for Iran's longstanding prohibition on nuclear weapons, based on a decree by the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
The assembly is constitutionally responsible for appointing and overseeing Iran's supreme leader. It has no direct authority over nuclear policy, but its statement gives institutional weight to demands previously voiced largely by hardline lawmakers and commentators.
Iran has long maintained that its nuclear program is peaceful, citing Khamenei's religious ruling against weapons of mass destruction.
Iran's security chief Mohsen Rezaei said last month that changing the nuclear doctrine was under discussion but that neither the government nor the broader establishment had made a new decision.
Earlier this week, Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei said Tehran remained committed to the NPT.
Hardliners press for nuclear policy shift
Tehran's interim Friday prayer leader, Mohammad-Javad Haj Ali-Akbari, described revising the nuclear doctrine as a national demand on October 30. Lawmaker Ahmad Naderi has openly advocated acquiring an atomic bomb.
Hardliners have also urged Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei to overturn his father Ali Khamenei's religious decree prohibiting the production of nuclear weapons. Others have proposed enriching uranium to weapons-grade levels while stopping short of manufacturing a bomb.
Reformist figures have challenged claims that developing nuclear weapons enjoys broad public support. Separately, Nour News, a website close to the Supreme National Security Council, warned against allowing crowd slogans to substitute for expert assessment of nuclear policy.
Warning of retaliation
The assembly also warned that another attack on Iran would trigger an “immediate and effective response without geographical limits” from the armed forces.
Its language echoed instructions attributed to Mojtaba Khamenei in an account published by the Revolutionary Guards-affiliated Tasnim news agency on October 31. That account did not announce an order to develop nuclear weapons.
Beyond military policy, the assembly called for establishing a “war economy headquarters” involving different branches of government and operating under the supreme leader's oversight.
It also urged action against what it described as the enemy's “cultural assault,” particularly concerning chastity and hijab.
Iran's parliament is preparing to consider allowing a non-cleric to head the Intelligence Ministry for the first time, under a proposal that would also give the supreme leader direct appointment powers over two new bodies within the ministry.
Parliamentary presidium spokesman Abbas Goudarzi said Tuesday that an urgent bill removing the requirement of ijtihad, an advanced qualification in Islamic jurisprudence, would be placed on parliament's agenda next week, ISNA reported.
Under the proposal, two organizations responsible for "internal security" and "ideological affairs" would be established within the ministry. Their directors would be appointed by Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei, while the intelligence minister would continue to be nominated by the president and approved by parliament.
Goudarzi described the two organizations as a substitute for the minister’s religious qualification.
He said the change would help resolve a vacancy lasting nearly eight months, following the killing of Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib, a clerical figure, in an Israeli strike in March. The ministry has since been run by an acting minister whose identity has not been publicly disclosed.
Four decades of clerical intelligence chiefs
Since the ministry’s establishment in 1984, every permanent intelligence minister has been a cleric, under a law passed in 1983 requiring religious education equivalent to ijtihad.
Clerical leadership has not insulated the ministry from scandals over repression. Dissidents were assassinated inside Iran and abroad during Ali Fallahian’s tenure from 1989 to 1997. His successor, Ghorbanali Dorri Najafabadi, resigned in 1999 after the ministry acknowledged its agents’ involvement in the 1998 murders of dissidents and writers.
Control of the ministry has also brought presidents into conflict with the supreme leader. In 2011, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad dismissed Intelligence Minister Heydar Moslehi, but Ali Khamenei ordered his reinstatement, demonstrating the limits of presidential authority over the ministry.
A broader selection process, new appointments
The proposal follows conflicting statements from lawmakers about whether the change had received committee approval.
Amir Hayat Moghadam, deputy chairman of parliament's National Security and Foreign Policy Committee, argued Saturday that the requirement had restricted the selection of qualified intelligence professionals.
Committee spokesman Hassan Qashqavi subsequently clarified that members had discussed the issue without formally approving legislation. But Hayat Moghadam claimed committee approval.
The latest proposal would widen the pool of potential ministers while establishing two senior positions filled directly by the supreme leader.
The proposal also comes after years of competition between the ministry and the Revolutionary Guards’ separate intelligence organization.
Whether the change would benefit career intelligence officers or open the position to figures from the Guards remains unclear. No candidate has been publicly identified, and the proposal still requires parliamentary approval and clearance by the Guardian Council.
Four Iranian reformist intellectuals have urged Tehran to seize an opportunity for diplomacy following Donald Trump's midterm election defeat, while warning that the US president could respond to his political setback by escalating rather than ending the war.
Writing in three articles published in the reformist newspaper Etemad on Sunday, November 8, Mohammad-Javad Haghshenas, sociologist Mahmoud Sadri, international relations analyst Alireza Ghandriz and political analyst Alireza Rajaei offered differing assessments of what Democratic control of Congress could mean for negotiations.
Their shared premise is that the elections have raised the domestic cost of the war for Trump without removing his authority to wage it. Trump himself acknowledged that “part of it was Iran,” while defending his decision to attack.
Haghshenas, a former leader of the National Trust Party, offered the most optimistic assessment, arguing that Tehran should move quickly rather than wait for uncertain political developments in Washington.
Citing reports of a purported letter from Vice President JD Vance proposing direct talks, Haghshenas argued that Vance, a potential contender for the 2028 Republican presidential nomination, had a political interest in ending a war that has damaged his party.
Echoing Qatar's prime minister, he urged both sides to accept a workable agreement rather than hold out for an ideal one.
Making a deal politically possible
Sadri and Ghandriz, writing jointly, argued that any agreement must be politically defensible in both Tehran and Washington.
They warned that Democratic opposition to Trump's handling of the war should not be mistaken for opposition to pressure on Iran.
President George W. Bush, they wrote, responded to the Republican defeat in the 2006 midterm elections by ordering a military surge in Iraq rather than withdrawing.
Citing the gradual normalisation of US-Vietnam relations in 1995 as a model, they proposed starting with limited humanitarian and maritime cooperation before expanding civil, academic and business ties.
Above all, they warned that presenting an agreement in Iran as an American surrender would undermine the very figures in Washington whose support would be needed to sustain it.
The danger of a wounded Trump
Rajaei offered the most guarded assessment, comparing Trump to a political gambler who might raise the stakes rather than accept a visible defeat. He stressed that he was describing political behaviour, not making a psychological judgment.
He outlined three possible scenarios: a limited agreement, continued pressure through sanctions and military threats, or renewed escalation triggered by failed negotiations, Israeli pressure or miscalculation.
Rather than trying to predict Trump's next move, Rajaei urged Tehran to strengthen crisis management, civilian resilience and transparent public communication.
His warning comes as Washington continues to combine diplomatic signals with military and economic pressure.
On the eve of the midterms, Trump said a deal with Iran “could happen,” and Tehran has since conveyed proposals through Qatari mediators. Meanwhile, the US naval blockade and sanctions remain in place.
Reports of preparations for a larger US offensive and the expected arrival of an aircraft carrier group in the region have added to uncertainty.
The conflicting signals make it difficult for Tehran to distinguish genuine negotiating opportunities from attempts to extract concessions under pressure.
Trump's record of abrupt changes in negotiating positions, including his public rejection of Iran's account of the Islamabad memorandum in June, adds to the risks of relying on a sweeping agreement rather than limited, reciprocal steps.
Each reversal could also strengthen Iranian hardliners who argue that Washington cannot be trusted, echoing Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei's November 4 warning against expecting changes in US policy simply because political control shifts between parties.
The three articles offer a snapshot of reformist thinking at a moment when Tehran faces competing pressures to negotiate and maintain its confrontational posture.
Haghshenas sees an opportunity that should be seized quickly. Sadri and Ghandriz argue that any agreement must withstand political opposition on both sides. Rajaei warns that Trump's electoral defeat could encourage escalation rather than compromise.
What unites them is a warning that Trump's electoral defeat is neither an Iranian victory nor a guarantee of American restraint.
