Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr

Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr was born in 1954 in Fasa, near Shiraz, Iran. He obtained a bachelor’s degree in economics from the Faculty of Economics at the University of Tehran, prior to Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution.^[2]

Before the 1979 Islamic revolution, he was a member of the Mansourun guerrilla group, an Islamist militant organization active at the time. In 1978 he, along with Mohsen Rezaei, killed an American engineer and an oil company manager.^[2] He is reportedly one of the founders of Ansar-e Hezbollah, a conservative paramilitary organization in Iran.^[4]

During the Iran–Iraq War, he co-headed the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps' educational division for military training, as well as guerrilla operations.^[10][11] He later served as the commander of the IRGC Irregular Warfare Headquarters, as well as the Ramazan Headquarters, which formed the basis for the Quds Force, the IRGC’s foreign branch that conducts asymmetric warfare outside of Iran.^[2][6]

He was the Chief of the Joint Staff of the IRGC from 1989 to 1997.^[2] Zolghadr served as the deputy commander of the IRGC from 1997 to 2005.^[2][4] In 2007, Zolghadr was appointed the deputy chief of the General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces for Basij-related affairs.^[12]

Following the Iranian Revolution, Zolghadr joined the Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution Organization and belonged to its right-wing faction,^[13] having previously been a member of Mansouroun guerrilla organization along with later fellow IRGC servicemen Rezaei, Shamkhani and Rashid.^[14]

After he helped Mahmoud Ahmadinejad come to power with a "multilayered plan," from 2005 to 2007 he was Deputy Interior Minister for Security Affairs and Police under Ahmadinejad.^[15][4][5] In April 2007, he warned the U.S. that if it were to attack Iran, Iran would fire “tens of thousands of missiles at American targets every day."^[5]

Beginning in 2021, Zolghadr led Iran’s Expediency Discernment Council. The council advises Iran’s Supreme Leader.^[5]

In March 2026, he was appointed Secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, succeeding Ali Larijani, who had been killed.^[16][17]

In 2010, Zolghadr began serving as an advisor to the Chief Justice Sadiq Larijani, the brother of Ali Larijani.^[5] He was appointed the deputy Judiciary chief for strategic affairs on 14 May 2012.^[18][19]

Zolghadr is married to Sedigheh Begum Hejazi, who has served as Director-General of the Office of Women and Family Affairs at the Organization of Islamic Culture and Communication. His son-in-law, Kazem Gharibabadi, is an Iranian diplomat who has represented Iran in Vienna at international organizations, including the International Atomic Energy Agency.^[2]

Zolghadr authored Qesse-ye Ghorbat-e Gharbi (Persian: قصه‌ی غربت غربی; English: The Tale of Western Estrangement), published in 1381 (2002–2003) in Iran by Dowrye Aliye Jang. The work, written in Persian, is a short volume (38 pages) that engages with themes related to Western society and culture, framed through a critical and ideological lens.^[20]

• List of Iranian officials