Since the start of the war with the United States, almost six months ago, Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Jamenei, offered this month – from an unknown location – the clearest vision so far of his government plan. The son of the assassinated Ayatollah Ali Jamenei is said to have appointed a series of hardline veteran military commanders to the main security positions of the Islamic Republic.
The reorganization indicates that Jamenei plans to keep the nation on a war footing, preparing for an escalation both internally and externally, according to analysts consulted by The New York Times.
The bet is to sustain an indefinite confrontation with the United States and, at the same time, contain internal dissent among the Iranian population, which suffers the consequences of an economy worn out since last December, now increased by the consequences of the war.
But, first of all, the new security chiefs will have to navigate a period of uncertainty. Large-scale clashes have decreased, but neither Washington nor Tehran show willingness to yield in negotiations over the Strait of Hormuz, and the 60-day deadline to reach an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program expired on Monday. The stalemate keeps the region in a state of insecurity that could lead to an escalation at any moment.
That uncertainty would also have consequences in the United States. While Tehran prepares to withstand a new onslaught from the Donald Trump administration, concern is growing in Washington over the wear of the American conventional arsenal and – according to information from Middle East Eye and NBC News – over a new Pentagon doctrine that gives greater weight to tactical nuclear weapons.
Among the appointments made by Ayatollah Mojtaba Jamenei is Mohsen Rezaei, who led the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps during the Iran-Iraq war and was appointed head of the Supreme National Security Council. At the same time, cleric and former head of Iranian intelligence, Hossein Taeb, was put in charge of the Basij, the network of paramilitary forces that the regime frequently uses to suppress protests.
Regarding this, Iran expert at the Center for International Policy, Sina Toossi – consulted by the Times – stated: “I would say this represents, above all, Mojtaba Jamenei’s imprint on Iran’s national security structure.”
Most of the appointees belong to an older generation of leaders who participated in the 1979 revolution and commanded troops during the war against Iraq in the 1980s, when the current supreme leader cultivated close relationships with several of them.
“These appointments suggest that, after the huge vulnerabilities exposed by the war, Mojtaba still trusts the old guard more,” explained Iran analyst at the DAWN study center, Omid Memarian.
Rezaei, in particular, has historically pushed maximalist military objectives, and unsuccessfully tried, during the war with Iraq, to convince Iranian leaders to prolong the conflict instead of accepting a ceasefire.
The restructuring also included a new Armed Forces General Staff, a new head of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, and a commander of the Revolutionary Guard Navy, a relevant position due to the strategic importance of the Strait of Hormuz.
The current supreme leader has also shown greater willingness to start a conflict with Washington than his father and predecessor, Ayatollah Ali Jamenei – who died in the first wave of U.S. and Israeli attacks on February 28 – was cautious when negotiating but moderate when confronting the United States militarily.
Mojtaba Jamenei, on the other hand, used bellicose language when announcing the new appointments, urging Rezaei to prepare for “powerful offensive operations against the enemy”.
This would raise doubts in Iran about how to end the war with the United States. Moderates in the government, such as President Massoud Pezeshkian, argue that Iran should leverage its effective control over the Strait of Hormuz to reach an agreement.
The more intransigent sectors, on the other hand, seek more concessions and prefer to maintain an aggressive stance that deters the United States from launching new military interventions, and they recall that the last two wars initiated by Washington and Israel began while Tehran was negotiating with the Trump administration.
The professor of Israeli studies at the University of Tehran, Hadi Borhani, stated: “The more intransigent sectors have gained enormous ground, arguing – and history seems to have proven them right – that the West is fundamentally untrustworthy.”
The more intransigent sectors would also argue, the academic added, that the only language the West understands is “resistance, military deterrence, and making any Western intervention in our region prohibitively costly.”
Most of the appointees, including Rezaei, supported the idea of resuming the short-lived memorandum of understanding signed with the Trump administration in June. Although they insist they will only return to that agreement if it is applied according to Iran’s interpretation of its terms, in particular that Tehran maintains control of the Strait of Hormuz until a definitive pact.
“At heart, it is a kind of pragmatism, a desire to find a solution,” said Iran expert at the Catholic University of Milan, Abdolrasool Divsallar. “It is a desire to guarantee their security,” he added.
However, Jamenei’s strategy would have serious implications for the more than 90 million inhabitants of Iran, who face a free-falling economy and live under the constant risk of a return to total war. Poor economic conditions fueled nationwide protests before the conflict, which Iranian security forces suppressed with lethal force.
“Iranian society increasingly resembles a pressure cooker that could explode with little warning,” said Memarian, the DAWN analyst. “A confrontation strategy abroad is much easier to sustain if the leadership believes it has the capacity to suppress its internal political consequences.”
This is one of the reasons why the appointment of Taeb at the head of the Basij is significant. A close ally of Jamenei for decades, he had accumulated power as head of Revolutionary Guard intelligence, a position from which he was removed in 2022 by the father of the current supreme leader, after former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad accused him of fabricating charges against political opponents.
His return allowed experts to foresee, a broader and harsher role for the Basij in citizen surveillance and repression. “Mojtaba might be willing to take risks in confronting the United States, risks that even his father avoided in his later years,” said Memarian. “The question is whether the Iranian political system – and, more importantly, Iranian society – can absorb the consequences of that risk.”
While Tehran prepares to resist, in Washington the war also shows signs of wear. Former U.S. congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene, a former close ally of Trump, stated that the administration is discussing the use of nuclear weapons against Iran.
“They are discussing the use of nuclear weapons against Iran in strategic meetings,” Greene wrote on X. “I’m not speculating, I know. And it’s pure evil,” she added. Greene warned that an escalation could trigger a global “nuclear holocaust” and stated that “the United States is not untouchable.”
Greene also accused Washington of having started the war based on warnings that Israel repeated for years about Iran’s nuclear program. “And now it is our government that is considering lowering the nuclear threshold to use nuclear weapons against Iran, despite Trump claiming to have won the war about 40 times and asserting that the United States controls the Strait of Hormuz,” she added.
The warning comes at a time when the U.S. military faces a shortage of weaponry. Reuters reported that U.S. forces had used “practically all” of their long-range precision missiles during the war, while the high spending on Patriot and THAAD interceptors weakened their operational capacity on other fronts.
Meanwhile, NBC News revealed that the Pentagon is developing a strategy, overseen by the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy, Elbridge Colby, that would give greater prominence to short-range tactical nuclear weapons in regional conflicts. “We consider that we need credible nuclear options,” a senior defense official told the U.S. network.
Colby has defended this type of warhead for years, smaller and shorter-range than strategic ones, considering that the current nuclear doctrine lacks credibility by “relying almost exclusively on the threat of an attack capable of destroying the entire nuclear force of an adversary.”
The shift in the nuclear paradigm, formally designed for scenarios with Russia and China, revived Cold War debates about how to deter conflicts without lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons. A congressional advisor familiar with the proposal called it to NBC “a great fallacy,” considering that it departs from Trump’s declared stance of strengthening the country’s nuclear deterrence.
No nuclear weapon has been used in a conflict since the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945. That historical precedent is, so far, the only real precedent of the threshold Washington might be willing to cross.
