Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr appointed new head of Iran's Supreme National Security Council

Veteran military commander and strategist Mohammad Baqer Zolqadr has been officially appointed as the new Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC).

Seyyed Mehdi Tabatabai, the Deputy for Communications and Information at the Iranian President's Office, announced it in a post on X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday.

Zolqadr has been appointed to the top security chair by a direct presidential decree and with the endorsement of Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Mojtaba Khamenei.

He replaces Ali Larijani, who was assassinated in the Israeli-American terrorist strike last week. Larijani had served in the position since August 2025.

The appointment of Zolqadr, a veteran commander of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC) and former senior security official, comes as the war imposed on Iran enters the fifth week.

According to insiders, he brings decades of experience across Iran's military, security, and judicial institutions to the post at a critical juncture.  

He previously served as deputy chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces for Basij affairs, and held senior positions in the judiciary for nearly a decade.

Before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Zolqadr earned a bachelor's degree in economics from Tehran University, followed by a master's in public administration from the same university. He later completed a doctorate in strategic management at the National Defense University.

Following the Holy Defense war in the late 1980s, Zolqadr served for eight years as head of the IRGC Joint Staff during the presidency of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. He then spent another eight years as deputy commander-in-chief of the IRGC.

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