The Pragmatist Who Came In From the Cold: Ali Larijani, Iran’s New Supreme National Security Council Secretary
An Iraqi-born native of Najaf but an unmistakably Iranian nationalist, Ali Larijani is expected to leverage his record of bureaucratic competence and global fluency to coordinate Iran’s security bureaucracy.
Iranian Secretary of Supreme National Security Council Ali Larijani, greets journalists upon his arrival to meet with the Lebanese parliament speaker, Nabih Berri, in Beirut, Lebanon, Aug. 13. (AP Photo/Bilal Hussein)
Executive Summary
On August 5, President Masoud Pezeshkian appointed Ali Larijani secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, a role he previously held from 2005-07. This time, he returns to an institutionally altered system and a strategically transformed landscape.
With Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei aging, under threat of assassination, and largely withdrawn from day-to-day command, strategic decisions increasingly emerge from a de facto collective leadership composed of the heads of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches alongside representatives of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and the army. Regionally, Israel’s September 17, 2024 electronic attacks that neutralized Hezbollah’s networks, the collapse of the regime of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, and the exposure of Iranian missile and drone vulnerabilities during the June conflict between Israel and Iran have eroded two pillars of Tehran’s deterrence – proxies and missiles – leaving the nuclear program the principal remaining lever to restore balance. Domestically, the state braces for renewed unrest driven by electricity shortages, water scarcity, sanctions, and inflation.
An Iraqi-born native of Najaf but an unmistakably Iranian nationalist, Larijani is expected to leverage his record of bureaucratic competence and global fluency to coordinate Iran’s security bureaucracy. Yet strategic coherence is far from assured. As with his predecessors, entrenched factionalism, institutional rivalries, and Khamenei’s habit of nurturing parallel command structures are likely to constrain his room for maneuver and complicate interagency discipline. A calculating hard-liner, with equal measures of opportunism, pragmatism, and Iranian nationalism shaping his political decision making, he is likely to be a wily operator. While these traits may prove woefully inadequate in allowing him to effectively steer Iran’s national security establishment at perhaps its most critical moment since the revolution, he also seems the best talent this regime could identify from its thinning bench.
Iran’s supreme leader is facing a strategic dilemma in how to pursue diplomacy with the United States and project strength amid internal fracturing and ambiguity.
Confronted with the clear and present danger posed by Israel, Iran’s collective leadership appears mired in policy paralysis, leaving Iran strategically adrift.
Iran may still call itself an Islamic Republic. In practice, however, it increasingly resembles a state in which the military governs from behind clerical robes.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in his office in Tehran at age 86, leaving behind a country in ruins and on the verge of civil war and potential disintegration.
Iran is signaling that it will not absorb attacks passively. But whether this strategy ensures the regime’s survival, seals its fate, or accelerates a broader catastrophe will shape the region for years to come.
The erosion of the regime’s legitimacy across broad segments of society, combined with the breadth of the 2025-26 protest coalition, raises the possibility that a new confrontation could trigger renewed anti-regime mobilization.
On January 8, AGSI hosted a virtual roundtable with its leadership and scholars as they look ahead and assess trends likely to shape the Gulf region and U.S. foreign policy during the coming year.
