President Masoud Pezeshkian named Mohsen Rezaei to run the SNSC (Supreme National Security Council), the body that sets Iranian security policy, on Sunday 9 August, after Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr resigned and moved to an advisory role1. Rezaei commanded the IRGC (Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps), Iran's ideological military force, from 1981 to 1997, and arrives at the council from the Expediency Discernment Council. Mojtaba Khamenei, Supreme Leader since March after his father was killed, separately made Rezaei his own representative on the body.
The council converts a negotiated text into Iranian policy, which is why its secretary matters to anyone outside Iran. Abbas Araghchi gave preliminary approval to a Hormuz draft on 5 August that has been waiting on this council ever since. The secretary who would have carried that draft to The Supreme Leader published Iran's maximum position on the strait on Saturday and was out of the job by Sunday. No Iranian outlet has given a reason for either the resignation or its timing, and none should be assumed.
Two readings survive the record. Rezaei is a Guard veteran succeeding a Guard veteran, Zolghadr moved sideways rather than out, and every new Supreme Leader installs people he trusts. Set against that, Rezaei has already named Iran's price in public. Tehran's demand for released assets stood at $12bn in May; in June Rezaei told CNN that any deal needs $24bn, doubling a figure Qatar had already refused to carry. The man who doubled the price now runs the council that decides whether the strait reopens, and an official who has stated a number on the record has less room to accept a smaller one in private. Pezeshkian himself wrote to Khamenei on 1 June accusing the IRGC of cutting the presidency out of war decisions. The appointment he has now signed seats a former Guard commander at the centre of the body that decides how the war ends.
