Brigadier Normal Ahmad Vahidi has a job that’s among the many strongest and influential in Iran – and one through which the shadow of dying continuously hovers.
Vahidi has taken command of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps at a very difficult second, amid a joint US-Israeli warfare on his nation that has killed greater than 1,000 folks, devastated Iranian cities, and assassinated a lot of the nation’s senior army management.
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His is a harmful job. Qassem Soleimani, the lengthy‑time commander of the IRGC’s elite Quds Pressure, for instance, was killed in a US drone strike in 2020 ordered by US President Donald Trump.
Mohammad Pakpour, the newest IRGC chief, was additionally killed throughout the opening part of the joint Israeli-US assaults on February 28. Pakpour had been appointed solely after Israel killed his predecessor, Hossein Salami, throughout the 12-day warfare in June 2025.
This churn on the high of the IRGC underscores the dangers hooked up to probably the most highly effective posts in Iran’s army institution. Now, Vahidi is tasked with a accountability that even Soleimani, an iconic determine in Iran, by no means needed to embrace: Main the sword fringe of Iran’s army in an precise, full-blown warfare.
Who’s Ahmad Vahidi?
Vahidi’s appointment as the brand new IRGC chief isn’t stunning. In December, the late Supreme Chief Ali Khamenei – who was killed on the opening day of the warfare, on February 28 – named him deputy chief. Previous to that, he served as deputy chief of Iran’s military.
A product of the IRGC from its earliest days within the late Seventies, Vahidi rose by means of the ranks throughout the Eighties, holding key positions in intelligence and within the army. Iranian state media stories that he led the elite Quds Pressure from 1988 to 1997.
He would hand the Quds Pressure’s management to Soleimani, who took command in 1998 and was extensively credited with increasing Iran’s affect throughout the Center East, till he was assassinated in 2020.
Vahidi seems to have publicly sworn himself to upholding the rules and goals of the Islamic Revolution. When he was appointed the deputy chief of the IRGC in December, he mentioned, “Guarding the Islamic Revolution is likely one of the best virtues on this planet, and the best evil that has been dedicated is opposing the Islamic system.”
In a 2025 interview with Iran’s Press TV, marking the forty sixth anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, he described that rebellion as a “burst of sunshine” which modified the historical past and future of the area and the world.
He has proven pragmatism when it serves Tehran’s strategic targets.
Within the mid‑Eighties, Vahidi reportedly took half in covert contacts between Iranian representatives and intermediaries near the administration of then-President Ronald Reagan that had been linked to the broader Iran‑Contra affair, through which US officers secretly facilitated arms deliveries to Iran.
Ali Alfoneh, an Iran skilled on the Arab Gulf States Institute, a Washington-based suppose tank, informed Al Jazeera that Vahidi was “intimately acquainted” with Israel and the US by means of his involvement in these talks.
Profession in cupboard
In contrast to his two predecessors, Vahidi isn’t solely a army determine.
He has additionally held senior political roles, serving as defence minister underneath former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He was appointed inside minister underneath the late President Ebrahim Raisi, leaving workplace in 2024.
Alfoneh informed Al Jazeera that Vahidi is a “succesful bureaucrat”, whose background makes him a “key wartime chief and a super chief commander of the Revolutionary Guard, which is way over merely a army organisation.”
Nevertheless, his time within the IRGC and in political workplace has drawn allegations which have adopted him.
Within the late 2000s, Interpol issued a pink discover for him on the request of Argentine authorities over his alleged position within the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish group centre in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 folks.
Iran denied involvement within the assault, and its Ministry of Overseas Affairs dismissed the Interpol discover as “baseless”.
The US and the European Union sanctioned him over Iran’s lethal crackdown on nationwide protests following the killing of Mahsa Amini in 2022. Amini died in police custody after she was arrested for not totally protecting her hair.
Mohammad Ali Shabani, the editor-in-chief of the Center East information outlet Amwaj, mentioned in a submit on X that Pakpour and Salami, Vahidi’s predecessors, had been “schoolteachers in comparison with this man”.
“The person is brutal. Hardliners losing no time filling vacancies due to Israel,” Shabani added.
What impression is he prone to have on the IRGC?
When the late Supreme Chief Ali Khamenei appointed Vahidi because the deputy of the IRGC in December, one in all his major duties was to prepared the Iranian armed forces for an additional doable assault from the US and Israel.
His intensive expertise throughout Iran’s authorities and safety establishments provides him broad affect throughout the state, say analysts, a bonus that’s particularly vital now, after the deaths of a lot of Iran’s senior leaders and veteran army figures.
That problem was underscored by feedback from Overseas Minister Abbas Araghchi, who urged in an interview with Al Jazeera that some Iranian army items have develop into “unbiased and considerably remoted”, working on normal directions relatively than being tightly managed by the civilian authorities.
Alfoneh informed Al Jazeera that the previous IRGC chief, Main Normal Mohammad-Ali Jafari, deliberately decentralised the IRGC to make sure “the organisation might survive decapitation and even the autumn of the capital, Tehran”.
“Brigadier Normal Vahidi is properly positioned to coordinate the actions of such a decentralised construction with the assistance of key commanders and IRGC veterans, who collectively represent an off-the-cuff collective management throughout the organisation,” he added.
Nader Hashemi, director of the Alwaleed Heart for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown College and creator of Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Center East, informed Al Jazeera that Iran’s leaders are searching for “essentially the most dependable and reliable candidate” as IRGC chief, somebody who can keep institutional continuity after the assassination of senior leaders and “encourage the rank and file to proceed combating regardless of overwhelming army odds”.
“The survival of the Islamic Republic depends on the IRGC,” Hashemi added. “They had been created for a second like this. The way forward for the Islamic Republic depends on their means to combat again and survive this assault.”
