Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian has appointed Ali Larijani, a longtime adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as secretary of the regime’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), the semi-official Fars news agency reported Tuesday.
The high-level appointment follows sweeping institutional shifts in the wake of Iran’s 12-day aerial confrontation with Israel in June, the Islamic Republic’s most significant security crisis since the Iran-Iraq war of the 1980s.
Larijani, a former member of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), previously served as SNSC secretary from 2005 to 2007, and later as speaker of Iran’s parliament from 2008 until 2020. He replaces Ali Akbar Ahmadian, who held the post since 2023.
Larijani, like many other senior Iranian officials, has verbally attacked Israel in the past.
In 2017, he described Israel as “aggressive and racist” and said it will always remain a source of threat to the nations in the Middle East and humanity in general.
He has in the past referred to Israel as a “cancer” and once boasted of the fact that Iran provided Hamas with the technology it has used to rain down rockets on Israel from Gaza.
In April, two months before Israel and the US attacked Iran’s nuclear facilities, Larijani warned that Iran would be forced to develop a nuclear bomb if it is attacked by either country.
His appointment comes two days after Iran reactivated its wartime-era Defense Council, originally established during the Iran-Iraq war, to oversee strategic military planning and centralize command over its armed forces.
Both the Defence Council and the Supreme National Security Council operate under the authority of Iran’s president.