Those following the appointment of new leadership figures in Iran have for the most part paused at the name of General Mohsen Rezaei, who has taken up the post of secretary-general of the Supreme National Security Council.
There are various reasons why an observer would stop at this name in particular. One is that he has been present in his country's public life since Khomeini's day. Indeed, we understand from his published biography that under the first Supreme Leader he commanded the Revolutionary Guard for as long as 15 years. But that is not the reason that gives you pause. The more important one is what his written biography says about his having been the man who wrote to Khomeini asking that the Iran-Iraq war be stopped.
We understand from his biography that he made this request, though it is not clear whether he was the one who asked, or whether Khomeini sought his opinion and his reply was that he agreed to stopping the war, or called for it. It is not precisely clear. Either way, what matters to us is that he was a party to ending the war between his country and Iraq, and that he was not on the side that wanted it to continue or to have its fire stoked further.
The question is this: will his position here, in the American-Israeli war, resemble his position there, in the Iran-Iraq war? The circumstances are of course not the circumstances, the war is not the war, and even the Supreme Leader is not the Supreme Leader. The one constant is that Rezaei is Rezaei - and it is not possible that he was a moderate in 1988, when the Iran-Iraq war was laid to rest, only to become a hardliner in 2026, as the region searches for a way to stop the war of the US and Israel against Iran, or rather the war the two of them began against Iran, which then became a war between the Americans and the Iranians alone, while Israel sat watching and waiting from a distance.
I say that Rezaei cannot have moved from moderation to hardline positions between the two wars, because a person by nature inclines toward moderation in his views as he grows older. Such is human nature in general. How much more so when the man we are discussing showed explicit moderation when asked what he thought about his country's war with Iraq, and did not merely lean the way moderation was leaning?
Perhaps it is that moderation of his at the time of that war which led those who recorded his published biography to describe him as "flexible."
Is it this quality in particular that prompted the Supreme Leader in Iran to choose him as his representative on the Supreme National Security Council, and then prompted President Masoud Pezeshkian, following the Supreme Leader, to issue a decision appointing him secretary-general of the council? It is possible, but it needs to pass the test of time.
We need to see from today onward something indicating that flexibility is one of the intrinsic traits of his character, and to see as well that his inclination to stop the war with Iraq was a sign of a moderation he carries in his thinking, and not merely a desire to end a war that had dragged on for eight years.
The Pakistani government, which is mediating between the Americans and the Iranians, has been saying over the past few hours that the two sides are close to reaching a settlement. We cannot help noticing that the Pakistani mediator's remarks to this effect coincide in time with Rezaei's arrival in his post at the supreme council.
Is there a connection between his arrival in the new position and the optimism that has prevailed and still prevails in the government in Pakistan?
That, in turn, is entirely possible, because the position the man occupies in the council's secretariat is by no measure a light one. From what we read about the powers of whoever sits in the secretary-general's chair, he has effective influence over every locus of decision in the country except that of the Supreme Leader. Which means he has influence over decision-making in the Revolutionary Guard and in the Iranian armed forces - and these are in fact the two loci where, if the contagion of his moderation, or something of it, should spread, Pakistani optimism will be well placed, and this part of the world will have an appointment with a chance to catch its breath.
Bringing a general like him into his new position cannot be a coincidence. He must have been brought in for a reason, and the reason will not stay hidden long in any case. All one hopes, watching people in our region suffer from this unnecessary war, is that Rezaei will not abandon his old moderation, that he will make it prevail, and that his elevation to the secretariat will prove to be a wager on moderation as a value, and a decision to let it override everything else.
