Six months into Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei’s rule, Iran has reshuffled its military and security leadership after a war that killed two cabinet ministers and a string of senior Revolutionary Guards commanders. Yet two of the country’s most sensitive posts remain shrouded in secrecy: who is running the Intelligence Ministry, and who now commands the Guards’ powerful intelligence arm. Defense Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh was killed on Feb. 28 in the opening strikes targeting the leadership, including the office of former Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei in Tehran’s heavily fortified Pasteur district. On March 2, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian appointed Majid Ben Reza as deputy defense minister. He is expected to be formally nominated to parliament to take over the ministry. Pezeshkian announced the death of Intelligence Minister Esmail Khatib on March 18. Since then, Iranian authorities have not disclosed who is serving as acting minister. The government-affiliated news outlet reported last week that the deputy intelligence minister had sent separate congratulatory messages to Supreme National Security Council Secretary Mohsen Rezaei and newly appointed military commanders, pledging the ministry’s cooperation with the new leadership on priorities set by the supreme leader for the armed forces. Deadline to name two ministers Pezeshkian is under pressure from close reformist allies over the delay in naming a new intelligence minister, one of five cabinet posts that require the supreme leader’s approval. In practice, the intelligence minister is usually chosen with the supreme leader’s direct involvement. The minister also sits on the 12-member Supreme National Security Council, giving the officeholder a direct role in Iran’s main security decision-making body. Abbas Goudarzi, a lawmaker and spokesman for parliament’s presiding board, said this week that Mojtaba Khamenei had given the government a deadline to submit nominees for the intelligence and defense ministries. “Under the authorization obtained from the supreme leader, the government has one and a half months from Aug. 20 to submit its proposed ministers for intelligence and defense to the Iranian parliament,” Goudarzi said. But naming a new intelligence minister may first require a change in the law. Current legislation requires the minister to have attained the religious rank of ijtihad, a senior scholarly qualification that sharply narrows the pool of candidates to clerics who meet the requirement. “The idea was raised that ijtihad should not be a requirement for the intelligence minister,” Goudarzi said. “Since the current law conflicts with this proposal, the law must be amended. It was therefore decided that the government would submit a bill to parliament on the matter.” Legacy of security breaches Khatib served as intelligence minister under former President Ebrahim Raisi and kept the job when Pezeshkian formed his government two years ago, despite mounting criticism of the security services over a series of breaches attributed to Israel’s Mossad. Those criticisms intensified after Israeli intelligence reached military commanders and officials involved in the nuclear program who were killed during the war. The next minister will inherit an agency battered by a string of security breaches and assassinations targeting military, nuclear and security officials, as well as the legacy left by successive ministers who ran the institution. Fresh questions over the security surrounding senior intelligence officials were raised by Khatib’s son. In an interview published by the state-run IRNA news agency on Aug. 10, he said his father had faced four assassination attempts before he was killed, including two during the June 2025 war. He said Khatib was later killed at the home of his second wife despite tight security surrounding his movements. Cultural Heritage Minister Reza Salehi Amiri is among the names being considered for the intelligence portfolio. Salehi Amiri, previously known as Reza Fallah, worked at the Intelligence Ministry during the 1980s and 1990s and was one of the agency’s leading interrogators before gradually moving into political and government posts. He later held positions at strategic research centers affiliated with the Iranian presidency and the Expediency Council. Under President Hassan Rouhani, he served for a year as deputy minister of sports and youth before becoming a presidential adviser and head of the National Library and Archives. He also served for a year as culture minister at the start of Rouhani’s second term before returning to government after Pezeshkian became president. Vacuum in Revolutionary Guards intelligence The picture is even murkier inside the Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence organization and its protection unit after several senior commanders were killed in the war. On April 6, the Revolutionary Guards confirmed that Brigadier General Majid Khademi, head of its intelligence organization, had been killed in an Israeli-US attack, hours after Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz first announced his death. Khademi had previously headed the Guards’ protection organization before becoming intelligence chief on June 19, 2025, succeeding Mohammad Kazemi. Before that, he oversaw the unit responsible for protecting political figures and sensitive sites, including key state institutions and nuclear facilities. Kazemi was killed in Israeli strikes on June 15, 2025, three days after dozens of Revolutionary Guards commanders were killed in the opening strikes of the 12-day war. That attack also killed Mohammad Reza Nasir Bagban, known by the alias Mohsen Bagheri, head of the Quds Force intelligence unit, and Brigadier General Hassan Mohaghegh, one of the Guards’ most prominent intelligence commanders and a figure with close ties to current Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei. Tehran has yet to disclose who now leads the Revolutionary Guards’ intelligence organization, its deputy command, or the Quds Force intelligence unit. Hossein Taeb, however, who spent 13 years at the helm of Guards intelligence, has returned to a senior security role as commander of the Basij, tasked with expanding the “popular intelligence network.”
