Iranian Media Reflects on Change of Supreme National Security Council Secretary

When Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi appointed Rear Admiral Ali Akbar Ahmadian Supreme National Security Council secretary May 22, Iran’s state-censored media largely just republished the biography for Ahmadian released by Nour News, the official mouthpiece of the SNSC. Iranian media outlets are now publishing commentary on why Admiral Ali Shamkhani was replaced and speculating about how the SNSC is likely to continue under Ahmadian. Shamkhani’s views on the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action nuclear deal have been subject to particular attention: Did Shamkhani favor the nuclear deal and try to revive it, leading the regime to replace him with the more critical Ahmadian to sabotage its revival? Or was Shamkhani himself critical of the nuclear deal? Esmaeel Kowsari, a veteran of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and a parliamentarian, appears to have the most accurate answer: Shamkhani was in favor of the nuclear deal but turned against it once the administration of President Donald J. Trump withdrew from it and reimposed sanctions on Iran. In this respect, Ahmadian is no different than his predecessor.

• May 22: Mansur Haqiqatpur, a political activist, reflected on Shamkhani’s exit from the SNSC in an interview with Entekhab News: “The appointment may be political, but it may also be perfectly natural. After all, he served as SNSC secretary for more than 10 years … and finding a replacement after 10 years may not be such a bad thing … However, it may also have a political dimension. Mr. Raisi is looking for someone whose thinking is similar to his … I doubt the Saudi issue,” a reference to the rapprochement between Tehran and Riyadh, “had any relevance to the replacement. For almost two years, Mr. Raisi has been looking for a replacement for Mr. Shamkhani. The president tolerated him, perhaps because he could not find a suitable replacement to do it earlier.”
• May 23: Tabnak News released a background story on the functions of the SNSC.
• May 23: Reformist Etemad Daily’s Mohammad Hasan Najmi claimed Shamkhani was poised to “revive” the JCPOA and that opponents of the deal “got rid of him.”
• May 23: Kayhan Daily, possibly in response to Najmi’s claims, which were circulating around the time of Shamkhani’s dismissal, wrote: “With regard to the JCPOA, although Shamkhani was initially and generally optimistic, he later became a serious critic of the agreement, with its harmful results … President Hassan Rouhani and some of the people around him, on the other hand, ignored the lessons learned and the harmful impact of the JCPOA and pursued an agreement with the United States at any cost. Had it not been for the cooperation between the Parliament and the secretariat of the SNSC, the country would have paid a higher economic, political, and security price.”
• May 23: Hossein Naqavi Hosseini, a political analyst and former parliamentarian, in an interview with Mosalas Online, gave Shamkhani “mediocre” marks for his tenure as SNSC secretary: “President Hassan Rouhani took the portfolio of nuclear negotiations away from the SNSC and handed it over to the Foreign Ministry. After this, the SNSC in practice did not play any role in the negotiations … The United States agreed to it, but as we saw later, the agreement did not benefit us after the U.S. withdrawal, so none of this is related to Mr. Shamkhani’s performance … However, domestic security issues must be seen as a part of Mr. Shamkhani’s track record … During his tenure, Mr. Shamkhani demonstrated that he was closer to the late” President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani “and Mr. Rouhani.”
• May 23: In an interview with Nameh News, Mehrdad Lahouti, a political activist and commentator, compared Shamkhani’s performance with his predecessors’.
• May 24: Heshmatollah Falahatpisheh, a reformist political activist, said in an interview with Shargh Daily that Shamkhani’s exit will most likely be followed by “further purges in the SNSC and the Foreign Ministry.”
• May 25: Kourosh Ahmadi, a retired diplomat, in an interview with Entekhab, dismissed the idea that Shamkhani’s exit will impact nuclear negotiations.
• May 25: Nameh News published exchanges between a reporter and Kowsari. The reporter asked: “Besides the fact that Mr. Ahmadian was an opponent of the JCPOA, how do you think his appointment is likely to impact the performance of the council?” Kowsari asked: “So, you mean since he was opposed to the JCPOA, he should not have gotten the appointment?” The reporter replied: “By ‘besides,’ I mean how is this change likely to impact our engagement” with the United States? Kowsari then asked: “What did we get out of the JCPOA, since you are so supportive of it?” The reporter responded: “What I mean is, how can someone who was opposed to the JCPOA engage internationally?” Kowsari replied: “No … First, a few things must be clarified. Was it us who did not live up to our obligations, since we are now treated as debtors? We approved of engagement, signed the agreement, and lived up to our obligations. Back then, I was a member of the parliamentary National Security Committee, and we were supervising everything. We stored 13,000 centrifuges and delivered approximately 10 tons of enriched uranium so that our supplies were reduced to 300 kilograms. We did the same thing with the heavy water,” reactor. “We lived up to our obligations. What did they do? They sanctioned us. So, we who were supervising the process told the Cabinet, ‘Let us wait and see if they live up to their obligations,’ but the Cabinet did not listen to us.”
• May 26: Javan Newspaper, a mouthpiece of the IRGC, released an updated biography of Ahmadian.

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