File Photo: Revolutionary Guards general Ali Abdollahi. Photo courtesy of Tasnim.
Abdollahi had previously led the Khatam al-Anbiya, Iran's inter-branch central military command tasked with coordinating operations.
A statement on Khamenei's website announced that "Major General Ali Abdollahi has been appointed chief of staff of the armed forces. Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi has also been appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps with the rank of major general."
The pair represent Khamenei's first senior military appointments since being named supreme leader early in the Middle East war after the death of his father in US-Israeli strikes.
Abdollahi has issued bellicose threats over the course of the war, warning regional neighbours earlier this month that "any country serving as a defensive shield for criminal and aggressive America will be engulfed by the flames of war."
On Sunday, Khamenei appointed Mohsen Rezaei, a military adviser to its new supreme leader, to head its powerful Supreme National Security Council.
Rezaei commanded Iran's paramilitary Revolutionary Guard from 1981 to 1997, a period that includes Iran’s 1980s war with Iraq. The 71-year-old hardliner last week threatened American forces with “serious risks and casualties” if the U.S. did not lift its blockade of Iranian ports.
Rezaei replaces Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr, who took the security council role in March after his predecessor was killed by an Israeli strike. Zolghadr will become a political adviser to Khamenei.
While he appears willing to negotiate with the U.S. to “secure Iran’s maximalist aims, including control of the Strait of Hormuz,” Rezaei has also been “unwilling to present any Iranian concessions,” wrote the Institute for the Study of War, a U.S.-based think tank.
An Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesperson said Iran will not reopen the Strait of Hormuz until the United States meets its conditions.
“It is up to the U.S. side to stop and make amends for its illegal and destructive actions,” Esmail Baghaei said Monday, noting the American blockade of Iranian ports.
Iran wants the U.S. to end the blockade, pay compensation for months of war damage, lift economic sanctions and release Iran's frozen assets. The closure of the Strait of Hormuz — a waterway that normally carries roughly one-fifth of the world's traded oil supplies — has become the war’s most lasting consequence. The impasse has kept energy prices as a major focus of U.S. politics ahead of November’s midterm elections.
Iran is holding separate talks with Oman over transit through the strait, including potentially a temporary shipping corridor. But it has said any actual reopening is contingent on talks with the U.S.
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