President Donald Trump told journalists on March 24 that the U.S. and Israel had succeeded in one of their goals in starting a war with Iran nearly one month ago. “We really had regime change,” Trump said. “This is a change in the regime, because the leaders are all different.”
A series of Israeli assassinations aided by U.S. intelligence have, indeed, changed those at the top of the Islamic Republic, beginning with long-time Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. But judging from their backgrounds, these leaders — some pulled out of retirement — are more hardline, anti-U.S., and anti-Israel than those they replaced.
All have backgrounds in the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), suggesting that the clerical veneer over Iran’s government since the 1979 revolution will become even thinner and that Iran will be a more a militarized regime going forward. That is likely to make it harder for Trump to find an easy offramp to the war or a pliant, Delcy Rodriguez-type individual willing to bow to U.S. demands.
Dr. Qalibaf the Opportunist
Comments by U.S. officials suggest that Trump is particularly partial to the speaker of the Iranian parliament, Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf. A former Tehran mayor, commander of the IRGC Air Force, and failed presidential candidate, Qalibaf was described to me by a Tehran analyst who asked to remain anonymous as an opportunist who has shifted from technocrat to ultra-hardliner over the past few decades in an effort to remain politically relevant.
Qalibaf, who is now 64, enlisted in the Basij, the IRGC’s youth wing, at 17 and entered the IRGC at the beginning of the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. By 1982, he commanded the 21st Imam Reza Division and in 1983, he led the 5th Nasr Khorasan Division. He lost his brother Hassan during a failed offensive against Iraq, Operation Karbala-4, in 1986. After the war, Qalibaf led the 25th Karbala Division and from 1994 to 1997, headed the Khatam al-Anbiya Construction Headquarters, the IRGC’s key economic and industrial conglomerate. There he oversaw major infrastructure projects, including a railway to Central Asia, gas pipelines to five provinces, offshore structures in the Persian Gulf, and the Karkheh Dam. During this period, he earned a bachelor’s in human geography from Tehran University and a master’s in political geography.
In 1997, Qalibaf was appointed IRGC Air Force commander, and served in that position until 2000. He trained in Iran and France, qualifying for Airbus operations, which added “captain” and “pilot” to his titles. While seeking to project an aura of modernity, he firmly opposed political reforms and in 1999 was among two dozen IRGC commanders who signed a controversial letter demanding that then President Mohammad Khatami squelch student protests over the closure of a reformist newspaper. That same year, Supreme Leader Khamenei named Qalibaf national police chief, a role he held until 2005. He also completed a PhD in political geography at Tarbiat Modares University in 2001, defending a thesis on local institutions and became known as “Dr. Qalibaf.”
In 2005, he resigned as police chief to run for president, targeting the youth vote. His campaign produced a slick television ad, modeled after Tom Cruise in the movie Top Gun, that showed Qalibaf piloting an Iran Air Flight. But he finished fourth among seven candidates in an election that was won in a run-off by fellow IRGC veteran Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who had been mayor of Tehran. Conservatives on the city council appointed Qalibaf to fill out Ahmadinejad’s term.
As Tehran mayor until 2017, Qalibaf pursued so-called “jihadi management,” building bus lines, tunnels, bridges and underpasses. He ran and lost again for president in 2013 to pragmatist cleric Hassan Rouhani and withdrew from contention in 2017 for a fellow hardliner. Qalibaf left the mayorship following several financial scandals that targeted deputies but left him unscathed.
In 2020, he ran for parliament and was chosen as the body’s speaker, a position renewed in 2024 as the country reverted to conservative political leadership under then president Ebrahim Raisi. To secure parliamentary support, Qalibaf outflanked more extreme right-wingers, supporting bills that blocked a revival of the 2015 nuclear deal and defending growing Iranian security ties with Russia. During the June 2025 Israeli and U.S. war with Iran, Qalibaf reportedly was given temporary command of Iran’s response following the assassination of key military leaders.
Zolghadr Lacks Larijani’s Diplomatic Record
Appointed to replace the assassinated secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council, Ali Larijiani, Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, 72, is a former deputy commander of the IRGC, closely associated with Mohsen Rezaei, a former longtime IRGC commander. According to Mohammad Mazhari, a former journalist in Iran and contributor to Middle East Perspectives who is now a sociology student at Texas Woman’s University, Zolghadr is “part of a generation of security elites who have moved across military, judicial, and political institutions, helping shape and institutionalize the system’s security logic.” Mazhari told me that Zolghadr rose within the IRGC alongside Rezaei and that his role expanded into internal control and strategic decision-making.
According to the New York Times, Mr. Zolghadr was part of a “multilayered plan” that helped Ahmadinejad become president in 2005 as the IRGC rose as a major force in electoral politics. As a reward, Zolghadr was appointed deputy interior minister. In 2010, Zolghadr became a senior aide to the then head of the judiciary, Sadegh Larijani, a brother of Ali Larijani. Zolghader has headed the Expediency Council, a body that advises the supreme leader and resolves disputes among government branches, since 2021. However, Zolghadr lacks Larijani’s record as a diplomat and nuclear negotiator and is not likely to be as effective an interlocuter with the U.S.
“The return of figures like Zolghadr reflects a clear reliance on trusted veterans,” Mazhari told me. “In a period of instability, the system seems to be prioritizing loyalty, experience, and institutional memory over bringing in new faces; essentially consolidating power within the same networks that go back to the IRGC’s 1980s structure.”
An Election Without Rezaei is Like Kebabs Without Onions
There are few more venerable old-timers in the Islamic Republic than Mohsen Rezaei, 74, one of the founders of the IRGC and its leader for 17 years, including during the Iran-Iraq war, who has been brought back to advise the new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, on military affairs.
Like Harold Stassen, a former Minnesota governor who ran unsuccessfully for U.S. president nine times, Rezaei ran — and lost — repeatedly for Iran’s president at a time when the office seemed more influential than it does now under Masoud Pezeshkian, a lackluster reformist. In 2005, Rezaei sought out an interview with me when I was a reporter for USA Today and he was first running for president, and called for greater economic cooperation with the West, including the United States. But he was always considered a conservative. Iranian political commentators have lampooned Rezaei for his failed electoral efforts, which included plastic surgery to improve his appearance. In a 2021 profile, I quoted a comment on social media that “Elections without Mohsen Rezaei are like kebabs without onions.”
However, Rezaei has remained relevant through his association with right-wing Tabnak news agency and as the head of the Expediency Council from 1997 to 2021 and a vice president for economic affairs between 2021 and 2023.
Vahidi’s Two Predecessors Were Assassinated
A former defense minister under Ahmadinejad and interior minister under Raisi, Vahidi headed the elite Quds Force from 1988 to 1997 when he was succeeded by Qasem Soleimani (assassinated by the U.S. under the first Trump administration). Vahidi is reported to have had contacts with Israelis in the 1980s during the Iran-Contra affair, when the U.S., with Israeli encouragement, sold Iran weapons and used the proceeds to fund anti-Communist guerrillas in Nicaragua. Vahidi has also been linked to terrorist bombings against Jewish targets in Argentina in the 1990s, when Israel began to focus on Iran as its greatest external security threat.
Taken together, these “new” leaders are hardly new and unlikely to steer Iran on a more conciliatory path. In the nearly one month since the U.S. and Israel attacked Iran, the country’s surviving senior officials have aggressively retaliated against U.S., Israeli, and Gulf Arab targets and used control over the Strait of Hormuz to drastically reduce oil, liquified natural gas, and fertilizer exports, spreading economic pain around the globe. The war has rekindled memories of Iraq’s 1980 invasion and Iran’s resistance and survival. Iran’s leaders are likely to refer to those days to repress dissent, encourage their fellow countrymen and women to endure the bombings, and wait for the U.S. and Israel to blink first.
