Mohsen Rezaei: When the State Recalls Its Old Guard

In exceptional times-when the deep structure of the state begins to tremble and the central question becomes one of regime survival-systems tend to revert to their most weighty figures in both institutional standing and collective memory; to those who embody accumulated layers of experience, legitimacy, networks, and foundational narrative.

It is precisely through this lens that one may interpret the decision to reappoint the veteran general Mohsen Rezaei as a military advisor to Iran’s new Supreme Leader, at what is arguably one of the most perilous moments the Islamic Republic has faced since its establishment in 1979. This appointment, widely circulated in Iranian media and reported by international outlets, comes amid an open war, a turbulent transition at the apex of power, and a marked escalation in military and political attrition.

The significance of this return lies not merely in the office itself, but in the type of figure selected to occupy it. Mohsen Rezaei belongs to the founding generation of both war and state; a man who emerged from the social and geographical margins of southwestern Iran, rose through the heart of the revolution, and later through the crucible of the Iran–Iraq War, before transitioning from the military establishment into institutions concerned with arbitration, strategic assessment, and economic balancing within the system. In this sense, his recall today signals not only Tehran’s need for a military expert, but also its return-at a moment of acute pressure-to its original memory of survival.

From Masjed Soleyman to the Core of the State

Mohsen Rezaei was born in 1954 in Masjed Soleyman, in Iran’s Khuzestan province, into a devout Bakhtiari family. This background constitutes a key entry point into understanding his formation. Masjed Soleyman is more than an ordinary city: it is the site of early oil discovery, a peripheral space adjacent to wealth yet inseparable from marginalization, and a southern milieu where rural, tribal, modern state, and extractive economic structures intersect. In such environments, a generation emerges that perceives the state through a dual lens: as an instrument of upward mobility and, simultaneously, as an arena of conflict and domination.

Rezaei was shaped within this charged southern geography before moving in his youth to Ahvaz to study at a school affiliated with the National Iranian Oil Company. There, he began early political and cultural opposition to the Shah’s regime, leading to his arrest by SAVAK at approximately seventeen years of age, and several months spent in solitary confinement.

This early trajectory explains a central dimension of his character: he is not among those who entered the system once it had already consolidated, but rather among those who entered the revolution through early hardship and organic involvement. He experienced imprisonment, clandestine organization, and the socio-geographical margins before encountering the state from within its offices. This distinction is significant when compared to many technocrats or institutional figures who rose during later periods of relative stability. In his formative essence, Rezaei is the product of a harsh environment and early struggle, not of a softened bureaucracy.

From Engineering to Economics

When he moved to Tehran in 1974, Rezaei enrolled at the Iran University of Science and Technology to study mechanical engineering. However, his academic trajectory was interrupted by the intensification of his opposition activities and the pursuit by SAVAK, leading him to leave before completing his degree and to engage in organized armed activity within networks that predated-and later merged into-the revolution.

Much later, after the conclusion of the Iran–Iraq War, Rezaei returned-this time as a former general-to university, but through an entirely different gateway: economics. He studied at the University of Tehran, eventually earning a PhD in economics in 2001. This transition from engineering serves as a key to understanding his later role within the system. It reflects a figure who sought to move beyond the image of a purely field-based military commander-without abandoning it-by adding another dimension: that of a statesman capable of thinking in the language of resources, balances, macroeconomic management, and the system’s overarching interests. In other words, he consciously attempted to reconstitute himself from a wartime general into a state figure with an economic voice.

This intellectual shift was closely aligned with his subsequent institutional transformation. Upon leaving the leadership of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps in the late 1990s, he did not retreat into isolation or symbolic retirement. Instead, he moved directly into the Expediency Discernment Council-an institution whose core function is to mediate between doctrine and interest, between text and necessity, and between the logic of the state and that of the revolution. A man who began in engineering and concluded in economics was, at one level, preparing himself for precisely this intermediary role: that of a figure not confined to the realm of slogans alone.

Family: Tragedy and the Public Image of the Man

On the personal level, Rezaei married in 1974 and has five children-two sons and three daughters. Yet, in his case, the familial dimension cannot be treated as a purely social sphere detached from politics. His private life intersected with one of the most painful episodes shaping his public image: the story of his eldest son, Ahmad Rezaei.

Ahmad emigrated to the United States in the late 1990s, sought political asylum, and voiced sharp criticisms of the Iranian regime. He later retracted his positions before being found dead in Dubai in 2011 under circumstances surrounded by conflicting accounts.

This incident does not, in itself, alter Rezaei’s political weight. However, it adds a deeply human and tragic dimension to his public persona. Mohsen Rezaei-long associated with revolutionary steadfastness and military discipline-has also experienced the fragility and fractures of private life.

In highly politicized systems such as Iran’s, familial tragedies often become integral to the broader reading of political figures, particularly when the family member in question has passed through exile, dissent, recantation, and an ambiguous death. A comparable-indeed more harrowing-experience marked the life of former President Hassan Rouhani, whose eldest son, Mohammad, died by suicide in the early 1990s, leaving behind a letter and a wound that reportedly never healed, while his mother largely withdrew from public life thereafter.

All of this has rendered Rezaei’s image within Iranian public consciousness somewhat broader than that of the “unyielding commander” alone; a persistent and heavy personal shadow accompanies him.

A Man of the Guards, Not Merely Its Prisoner

The decisive phase in Rezaei’s rise began with the revolution and the war. After 1979, he became involved in the newly formed armed structures and quickly ascended within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), eventually becoming its commander-in-chief in 1981 at approximately twenty-seven years of age-a position he held until 1997.

During this extended tenure, he was not merely an administrative commander but one of the architects of the Guards as an institution. In Iran, the IRGC has never functioned as a purely military arm; rather, it constitutes a parallel state project in which security, ideology, economics, politics, and complex business networks intersect.

Accordingly, Rezaei was not only among those who led the war but also among those who contributed to shaping the very structure of power that would go on to govern-or decisively influence-Iran for decades.

Under his command, or within his institutional shadow, an entire generation of future leaders emerged, including figures such as Qassem Soleimani. His trajectory also intersected with state and security figures like Ali Larijani in later phases. This grants Rezaei additional relevance today: he is not merely a historical symbol but a living bridge between different generations of the system. He understands the IRGC from within, is familiar with the clerical and political establishment, grasps both the logic of war and that of governance, and knows how settlements are managed inside the system-not outside it.

Crucially, however, despite his deep roots in the Guards, Rezaei did not remain entirely captive to a military identity. His transition to the Expediency Discernment Council-and his long tenure there, particularly during the chairmanship of Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani-brought him closer to the sphere of institutional pragmatism. While he remained fundamentally conservative and principlist in orientation, he did not harden into a closed ideological archetype. Rather, he evolved into a figure capable of speaking the language of security when necessary, the language of economics when required, and the language of “system interest” when contradictions intensify.

Why Did He Never Become President?

Here we arrive at one of the most revealing paradoxes in his career. Rezaei ran for the presidency multiple times and was permitted to do so, yet he never reached the office. This is a critical point in assessing his position within the system.

He was consistently prominent enough to remain part of the political game, yet seemingly not the figure the system’s deeper architecture intended to elevate to the head of the executive branch. This suggests that his true value, in the eyes of the underlying structure, lay more in his role as an institutional figure than as a mass-mobilizing leader or a candidate embodying full electoral legitimacy.

Precision is essential here: his failure to secure the presidency does not indicate absolute weakness, just as his repeated presence does not necessarily imply broad popular support. More plausibly, he has long been among those figures intended to remain within the system’s “safe circle”-useful, respected, permissible, and at times necessary, but not necessarily to be entrusted with a position where institutional weight intersects directly with the test of public legitimacy.

This explains why Rezaei has, over the years, remained present at the core of the state while simultaneously absent from the pinnacle of elected authority.

Why Does the System Need Him Now?

Yet the more pressing question today is not: Who is Mohsen Rezaei? but rather: Why does the system need him now?

The answer, in my view, is composite:

• First, because the system is experiencing a moment of intense war alongside a sensitive transition at the apex of power. Iran has entered its third week of open conflict, with thousands of casualties, a clear faltering in de-escalation efforts, and a new Supreme Leader adopting a hardline stance that rejects mediated proposals. In such moments, authority requires figures endowed with an unassailable historical capital within the core ideological camp. Rezaei provides precisely such capital, given his longstanding position within the IRGC and his wartime legacy.
• Second, because the system has lost-or seen the attrition of-a number of its senior figures, most recently Ali Larijani, recalling Rezaei in such circumstances serves as a message of reassurance to the institutional core: that members of the old guard still remain capable of filling critical gaps and weaving connections across the system’s various centers of power.
• Third, because Rezaei is not only a man of war but also a figure of transitional language. He is conservative, yes, but not of the type that closes all doors on principle. His long tenure in the Expediency Discernment Council has kept him connected to multiple layers within the elite, including pragmatic conservatives and what might be described as institutional moderates. This does not necessarily make him a natural bridge to reformists or to a discontented public, but it could position him as part of a broader mechanism-should the system decide to combine security hardening with calibrated political release.

What About Reformists and Moderates? Can He Be Part of a New Social Contract?

Any serious reading of Rezaei’s return must grapple with a highly sensitive question: what is his position vis-à-vis reformists and moderates, and what are the limits of his ability to contribute to a broader reconfiguration of the relationship between state and society?

Iran’s current crisis is not merely one of external war; it is also a cumulative internal crisis of trust, shaped by years of economic deterioration, political closure, and a widening gap between the state and broad segments of Iranian society-including constituencies that no longer find in the traditional revolutionary discourse an adequate response to their everyday and existential concerns.

Accordingly, any credible pathway toward a safe exit cannot remain confined to a purely security-based approach, however necessary it may be in wartime. Sooner or later, it will require a serious search for a new political formula capable of reducing estrangement and opening the door to a modified social contract between authority and society.

In this context, Mohsen Rezaei does not appear as a sharply antagonistic figure toward reformists and moderates in the way that some more rigid security or ideological personalities have been. Yet he is not one of them either; he does not carry their political imagination nor represent their governing language. He is better understood as a figure from within the hard structure-one who knows how to speak to multiple segments of the elite, but who ultimately remains a product of the system more than an independent bridge beyond it.

Nevertheless, his long trajectory within the Expediency Discernment Council, coupled with his extended relationships across diverse elite circles, grants him a particular capacity to participate in an internal settlement between pragmatic conservatives and certain strands of institutional moderation. From this perspective, his name should not be read as an automatic gateway to a major reformist revival, but rather as one of the figures who could be instrumental if the state were to decide to widen its margin of maneuver, listen more attentively, and re-engage voices that have been sidelined or marginalized in recent years.

Here, figures such as Mohammad Javad Zarif, Hassan Rouhani, Mohammad Khatami, and Mehdi Karroubi emerge-each to varying degrees-as symbols of currents or sensibilities that parts of Iranian society still view as representing an alternative to outright closure. This does not imply that Rezaei can reintegrate them into the core of the political scene, nor that his presence equates to reconciliation between the state and reformists. That would exceed both his capacity and the nature of his position. However, a figure like him-combining revolutionary legitimacy with institutional pragmatism-may be suited to contributing to the construction of an internal corridor that mitigates polarization and offers the system an opportunity to consider rebuilding itself not through force alone, but through a calibrated measure of openness and adaptation.

Ultimately, if the system genuinely seeks to preserve what remains of its cohesion, it will not be able to rely solely on men of war. At some stage, space must be made for figures of politics, diplomacy, and settlement. Societies cannot be governed indefinitely through the logic of perpetual mobilization.

Yet caution is warranted. Mohsen Rezaei, regardless of the breadth of his networks, does not in himself constitute a project of national reconciliation, nor does he possess the capacity to produce a new social contract single-handedly. At most, he may form part of a transitional architecture that allows the system-if it so chooses-to shift from a logic of military survival to one of political de-escalation. Whether such a shift occurs depends on a higher volition within the decision-making core, and on a genuine willingness to acknowledge that the state cannot endure through war alone, and that internal legitimacy cannot be regenerated through inherited slogans, but requires reform, representation, flexibility, and the reopening of public space to figures still capable-despite everything-of engaging with segments of an angry, frustrated, or uncertain society.

Between the “Cup of Poison” and the Present Crisis

In Iranian political narrative, Mohsen Rezaei’s name is often invoked in discussions of the final days of the Iran–Iraq War, when the leadership was compelled to accept UN Resolution 598-an act described by Ayatollah Khomeini as “drinking the cup of poison.” Historically, it is clear that Iran accepted the ceasefire under the pressure of military and economic exhaustion, and that assessments by military leaders regarding cost, capacity, and resources played a decisive role in that moment.

Rezaei himself is often associated, in Iranian literature, with memoranda and military evaluations that highlighted the scale of resources and time required to continue the war under conditions of victory-thus exposing the limits of the state’s actual capacity. He was among the influential military voices in that painful moment of recognition that continuation under the same costs was untenable.

This is what gives the comparison with the present moment its analytical appeal. Has Rezaei returned today as a man of military decisiveness-or as a man of exit from war?

So far, observable facts do not allow for a definitive conclusion that he has returned to prepare a settlement. On the contrary, positions attributed to the new Iranian leadership appear more inclined toward hardline escalation and the rejection of de-escalation. Yet Rezaei’s value lies in the possibility that, should the system come to recognize that survival requires a painful turn, he would be among the few capable of articulating realism in the language of the revolution-not in the language of defeat. This is a rare attribute: states do not exit major wars through the hands of poets, but through figures who understand both the cost of continuation and the cost of retreat.

Conclusion: A Man of Passage, Not Salvation

To be clear, Mohsen Rezaei is not a magical savior, nor is he the figure capable on his own of rebuilding Iran’s social contract or repairing the trust gap between state and society. At most, he can serve as an instrument of passage-if the system itself decides that passage has become a priority. If, however, the higher decision remains captive to the logic of open-ended war and political denial, Rezaei alone will not alter anything fundamental.

His real strengths lie in three areas:

• His historical legitimacy within the revolutionary and IRGC establishment.
• His economic and administrative formation, which enables him to think in the language of cost rather than pure mobilization.
• His extended institutional networks, which make him more suited to transitional roles than to purely mobilizational ones.

His limitations are equally clear:

• He lacks broad popular charisma.
• He is not a reformist figure capable of symbolizing a new reconciliation with society.
• He is not, ultimately, the final decision-maker in a system where ultimate authority remains with the Supreme Leader and the more rigid power networks surrounding him.

If one were to evaluate his return in a single condensed formulation, it might be said that the Iranian system does not turn to Mohsen Rezaei because he represents the future, but because he embodies the most resilient memory when the present becomes unstable. It is an old card, yes-but not a worn-out one. It is a card from the era of the first war, brought back into play because the Islamic Republic senses that it has entered a conflict of an existential nature, and requires a man who understands from within what it means for a state to fight in order not to collapse-and what it means for a state to retreat in order not to perish.

In this sense, his appointment does not merely signify the return of an individual, but the return of an entire governing logic: the recourse to founding figures when options narrow. It is a logic that reflects both strength and weakness-strength, because the system still possesses heavyweight figures who can be summoned in critical moments; and weakness, because after nearly five decades, it continues to return, in its most severe crises, to almost the same generation, as though its deepest legitimacy still resides more in its past than in a future it has successfully constructed.

Thus, the real question is not whether Mohsen Rezaei matters-he undoubtedly does-but whether the system that has recalled him is prepared to use his experience merely to manage survival, or to open the way for a less costly and more rational political transition.

If the objective is merely to consolidate the core and maintain cohesion, then Rezaei is a fitting choice.
But if the aim is to preserve what remains of the state, de-escalate internally, and redefine the relationship with society, then he will remain only part of the solution-not the solution itself.