Since its establishment in 1989 through a constitutional amendment, five men have served as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, the central strategic decision-making body in Iran. With the exception of the current secretary, Rear Admiral Ali Akbar Ahmadian, Persian-language open sources provide an abundance of information about the backgrounds and factional affiliations of those chosen to lead the SNSC and some limited information about their contribution to strategic decision making. A comparative analysis of this information offers some insight into who these men were, why they were selected, and how they helped shape Iran’s national security strategy and behavior.   

The SNSC was born out of the Supreme National Defense and Security Council, which was established in the early days of the 1979 Islamic Revolution to reorganize Iran’s security and military organizations amid widespread defections and purges. After Iraq invaded Iran in September 1980, the council’s main task became directing the war effort. Prominent regime figures Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani both served on the council in various capacities. Rafsanjani, however, played a more prominent role as he, due to Grand Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s incapacity, also served as commander in chief of the armed forces. Rafsanjani protege Hassan Rouhani, who later became president, also found his way to the council, where he served as deputy commander in chief of the armed forces in 1988, toward the end of the Iran-Iraq War.

Founding Secretary, Hassan Rouhani

It was therefore hardly surprising that, as president, Rafsanjani appointed Rouhani the first secretary of the SNSC in October 1989. Then, in November 1989, Khamenei, in his capacity as supreme leader, appointed Rouhani and Ahmad Khomeini, son of the late founder of the Islamic Republic, his representatives to the SNSC. As a dual presidential and leadership appointee, Rouhani had to serve two masters at the same time, a predicament shared by his successors. Rouhani’s term continued beyond the Rafsanjani presidency as President Mohammad Khatami reappointed him in 1997, and he remained in office until 2005, making him the longest-serving SNSC secretary.

Rouhani’s success during his first eight years as secretary was largely due to the relatively harmonious intra-elite dynamics under the Rafsanjani presidency. Rafsanjani and Khamenei took advantage of the end of the Iran-Iraq War and Iraq’s August 1990 invasion of Kuwait to escape the diplomatic isolation the regime faced during the war with Iraq. Furthermore, Iran quickly recognized the independence of post-Soviet states following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, allowing Tehran to expand its sphere of influence in the former Soviet south. Rouhani also faced challenges, particularly regarding Iran’s controversial nuclear program and attacks Iran was implicated in abroad, but he managed to calm the waters. The presidency of Mohammad Khatami, on the other hand, proved particularly challenging for the regime due to the fundamentally opposing views of the supreme leader and president on issues ranging from domestic political liberalization to Iran’s nuclear program. During this period, as he neared the end of his term in office, Rouhani found himself managing anti-regime protests and coordinating the activities of regime bureaucracies under the extremely challenging circumstances that arose following the 9/11 attacks on the United States and the U.S.-led invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.

In his 2013 Persian-language book “Foreign Policy Decision Making in the Islamic Republic of Iran: Structures and Challenges,” Rouhani provided rare insights into the lessons he learned in the 1990s and early 2000s. More focused on implementing policy than making it, Rouhani identified poor coordination between Iran’s bureaucratic organizations, such as the Foreign Ministry and the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, as a central problem that contributed to the 2003 International Atomic Energy Agency Board of Governors statement against Iran’s undeclared uranium enrichment activities: The Atomic Energy Organization was not familiar with international law and diplomacy, and the Foreign Ministry was not aware of Iran’s nuclear activities, Rouhani found out. Rouhani tried to secure a greater degree of coordination but admitted that “differences of opinion” persisted among the bureaucracies, adding that a “lack of consensus among the ruling elites” under Khatami added a political dimension to the problem.

Rouhani also argued that inaccurate intelligence estimates, wishful thinking, and “delusions” at times shaped strategic decision making. For example, Rouhani disclosed that Iran’s intelligence services expected Iraq to resist the U.S.-led coalition forces in 2003 for at least six months but to their shock witnessed the collapse of the central government in Baghdad only three weeks after the invasion. In a sarcastic jab at President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who was to replace Khatami in office, Rouhani wrote: “Unfortunately, delusions at times constitute the foundation of our decision making.”

Shifting focus to domestic issues, Rouhani criticized the centralized nature of domestic crisis management. The 1992 protests in Mashhad and the 1995 and 1999 protests in Tehran, Rouhani argued, were all local incidents in which local authorities, either due to their lack of authority or efforts to evade responsibility, pushed onto the SNSC. Rouhani even argued the regime rewards low- and mid-ranking officials who, rather than take responsibility for their own actions, defer to higher levels of decision making, leading the regime to lose precious time in the initial phases of crises. As is apparent in his book, despite his efforts, Rouhani, the institution builder, never managed to correct the systemic and cultural design issues of the Islamic Republic.

Ali Larijani’s Tenure Aborted

Ahmadinejad’s surprise victory over Rafsanjani in the 2005 presidential election was followed by his just as surprising appointment of Ali Larijani as SNSC secretary. On the one hand, Larijani had served as the representative of the supreme leader to the SNSC after the mysterious death of Ahmad Khomeini, which made him a natural choice for secretary. On the other hand, Larijani and Ahmadinejad not only belonged to different political factions but also rose from different social classes and had fundamentally different political philosophies.

The populist Ahmadinejad came from humble circumstances, got entangled with a group involved in radical student politics at Iran University of Science and Technology in Tehran in the late 1970s, and called for the seizure of the embassy of the “godless” Soviet Union rather than the U.S. Embassy. In the early 1980s, the radical student group’s members served as local government officials in Iran’s northwestern provinces, and it later helped elect Ahmadinejad mayor of Tehran in 2003. In contrast, the conservative Larijani belonged to a well-to-do family of religious scholars from Najaf, Iraq. As the Iraqi government deported Iranian nationals back to Iran throughout the 1970s, Iranian deportees were welcomed by the regime of Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and gained even more influence in the newly established Islamic Republic.

Despite their differences, Ahmadinejad may have perceived Larijani as a tactical ally in his struggle against Rafsanjani, Rouhani, and other establishment figures, whom he deridingly called the “aristocracy of the Islamic Republic.” After all, Larijani had criticized Rouhani’s attempts to defuse the crisis over Iran’s nuclear program, particularly the 2003 Tehran Declaration pledging cooperation with the IAEA, as “trading pearls for bonbons.”

However, as SNSC secretary, Larijani’s fundamental approach to nuclear negotiations with the West and other major foreign and security policy issues was not very different than Rouhani’s. Larijani engaged in constructive dialogue with the European Union’s foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, but his efforts were sabotaged by the president. Ahmadinejad frequently emphasized that the Cabinet, meaning himself, was in charge of nuclear negotiations, even publicly lamenting that “some people loiter around negotiating on the rogue” and complaining of “those who negotiate from a position of fear and trepidation.”

Saeed Jalili’s Chaos

Saeed Jalili replaced Larijani as SNSC secretary in October 2007. Jalili was a political outsider without a strong factional affiliation or experience serving on the SNSC. It is not known why Ahmadinejad appointed an introverted and obscure former Foreign Ministry official to be SNSC secretary. Ahmadinejad perhaps realized he could not persuade Khamenei to accept someone from his own faction and therefore preferred to appoint someone without strong factional affiliations who would be unlikely to offer resistance to the head of the executive.

Jalili provided insight into his work as secretary in the pamphlet “What Transpires at the Secretariat,” which he published in 2013, after he left the SNSC. Jalili disclosed that 90% of the council’s work was crisis management, with a quarter of the SNSC’s time dedicated to the nuclear issue. As the United States imposed harsher sanctions against Iran under the Ahmadinejad presidency, Jalili expanded the work of the council’s Special Economic Measures Committee to evade the sanctions regime. Under Jalili, the SNSC also increased its monitoring of U.S. think tanks for signs of future sanctions and planned countermeasures.

Commentary on the Ahmadinejad presidency and Jalili’s tenure as secretary has not been kind. Rather than managing crises, the commentary charged the duo with actively provoking crises, deepening Iran’s diplomatic isolation, and legitimizing ever harsher sanctions against Iran. As a nuclear negotiator, Jalili is remembered for his idiosyncratic style. According to the memoir of CIA Director William Burns, who engaged in nuclear negotiations with Iran during his time at the State Department, Jalili once “embarked on nearly forty minutes of meandering philosophizing about Iran’s culture and history, and the constructive role it could play in the region. He could be stupefyingly opaque when he wanted to avoid straight answers, and this was certainly one of those occasions. He mentioned at one point that he still lectured part-time at Tehran University. I did not envy his students.”

Following the chaotic and crisis-ridden Ahmadinejad presidency, Rouhani’s two terms as president from 2013-21 represented a return to the semblance of normalcy of the Rafsanjani era. Rouhani, himself a former SNSC secretary, was finally positioned to put his lessons learned and network to good use.

Restoration of Order Under Ali Shamkhani

In an attempt to de-securitize Iran’s nuclear program and nuclear negotiations, Rouhani transferred the portfolio to the Foreign Ministry, led by the capable foreign minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, and appointed Admiral Ali Shamkhani SNSC secretary. On the surface, the appointment of Shamkhani may have appeared as Rouhani appeasing the powerful Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, but Rafsanjani’s diaries from the 1980s cast a very different light on the appointment. Although Shamkhani rose to power in the IRGC thanks to his close friendship with Mohsen Rezaei, the longest-serving IRGC chief commander, toward the end of the Iran-Iraq War, he shifted his loyalty to Rafsanjani, then commander in chief of the armed forces, and his deputy, Rouhani. Shamkhani did so by systematically feeding uncensored news of the catastrophic state of the Iranian military to Rafsanjani and Rouhani. In doing so, Shamkhani gradually left Rezaei’s network and was absorbed by the Rafsanjani faction.

Throughout Shamkhani’s almost 10 years in office, Iran faced three major anti-regime protests (in 2017-18, 2019, and 2022). His tenure also coincided with the conflicts in Syria, Iraq, and Yemen, Israel’s systematic bombardment of Iranian and allied positions in Syria and, at times, Lebanon and Iraq, the assassination of Iranian nuclear scientists and sabotage against Iran’s nuclear program, economic warfare against Iran by the U.S. administration of President Donald J. Trump, and the January 2020 assassination of IRGC Quds Force Chief Major General Qassim Suleimani. Open sources do not provide any reliable information about Shamkhani’s role in these crises, but his longevity in office may indicate his ability to align the conflicting interests of different parts of Iran’s bureaucracy. Perhaps more importantly, despite his shift of loyalty away from the IRGC and toward the Rafsanjani-Rouhani network, Shamkhani most likely managed to serve as an honest broker between the IRGC and civilians on the SNSC.

Ali Akbar Ahmadian on Conflict Course

Unlike his predecessor, Shamkhani, Ahmadian, the newly appointed SNSC secretary, does not appear to have shifted his loyalty to a civilian political faction. Rather, Ahmadian appears to be a member of a secret network that makes up the unofficial collective leadership of the IRGC. As such, although formally a presidential appointee, he may have been imposed on President Ebrahim Raisi by the IRGC. Thus, Ahmadian cannot be expected to play the role of an honest broker among the regime’s competing factions. This problem is likely to be compounded by Raisi’s subservience to Khamenei, inexperience in matters of national security, and limited knowledge of the work of Iran’s vast government bureaucracy.

The SNSC is therefore, once again, likely to find itself entangled in some of the problems identified by Rouhani: Subservient to Khamenei, Raisi does not even appear interested in shaping Iran’s foreign and security policy, which leaves the supreme leader’s at times sloganeering approach the sole political guideline for policy making. While each part of the bureaucracy will try to interpret those slogans to legitimize its own bureaucratic interests and policy recommendations, Ahmadian will most likely advance the interests of the IRGC, which in turn will likely result in poor coordination regarding the work of Iran’s state bureaucracy.