Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi has a job that’s among the most powerful and influential in Iran – and one in which the shadow of death constantly hovers.

Vahidi has taken command of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps at a particularly challenging moment, amid a joint US-Israeli war on his country that has killed more than 1,000 people, devastated Iranian cities, and assassinated much of the country’s senior military leadership.

His is a dangerous job. Qassem Soleimani, the long‑time commander of the IRGC’s elite Quds Force, for example, was killed in a US drone strike in 2020 ordered by US President Donald Trump.

Mohammad Pakpour, the most recent IRGC chief, was also killed during the opening phase of the joint Israeli-US attacks on February 28. Pakpour had been appointed only after Israel killed his predecessor, Hossein Salami, during the 12-day war in June 2025.

This churn at the top of the IRGC underscores the risks attached to one of the most powerful posts in Iran’s military establishment. Now, Vahidi is tasked with a responsibility that even Soleimani, an iconic figure in Iran, never had to embrace: Leading the sword edge of Iran’s military in an actual, full-blown war.

Who is Ahmad Vahidi?

Vahidi’s appointment as the new IRGC chief isn’t surprising. In December, the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei – who was killed on the opening day of the war, on February 28 – named him deputy chief. Prior to that, he served as deputy chief of Iran’s army.

A product of the IRGC from its earliest days in the late 1970s, Vahidi rose through the ranks during the 1980s, holding key positions in intelligence and in the military. Iranian state media reports that he led the elite Quds Force from 1988 to 1997.

He would hand the Quds Force’s leadership to Soleimani, who took command in 1998 and was widely credited with expanding Iran’s influence across the Middle East, until he was assassinated in 2020.

Vahidi appears to have publicly sworn himself to upholding the principles and aims of the Islamic Revolution. When he was appointed the deputy chief of the IRGC in December, he said, “Guarding the Islamic Revolution is one of the greatest virtues in the world, and the greatest evil that has been committed is opposing the Islamic system.”

In a 2025 interview with Iran’s Press TV, marking the 46th anniversary of the Islamic Revolution, he described that uprising as a “burst of light” which changed the history and destiny of the region and the world.

He has shown pragmatism when it serves Tehran’s strategic goals.

In the mid‑1980s, Vahidi reportedly took part in covert contacts between Iranian representatives and intermediaries close to the administration of then-President Ronald Reagan that were linked to the broader Iran‑Contra affair, in which US officials secretly facilitated arms deliveries to Iran.

Ali Alfoneh, an Iran expert at the Arab Gulf States Institute, a Washington-based think tank, told Al Jazeera that Vahidi was “intimately familiar” with Israel and the US through his involvement in those talks.

Career in cabinet

Unlike his two predecessors, Vahidi is not solely a military figure.

He has also held senior political roles, serving as defence minister under former President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. He was appointed interior minister under the late President Ebrahim Raisi, leaving office in 2024.

Alfoneh told Al Jazeera that Vahidi is a “capable bureaucrat”, whose background makes him a “key wartime leader and an ideal chief commander of the Revolutionary Guard, which is far more than simply a military organisation.”

However, his time in the IRGC and in political office has drawn allegations which have followed him.

In the late 2000s, Interpol issued a red notice for him at the request of Argentine authorities over his alleged role in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people.

Iran denied involvement in the attack, and its Ministry of Foreign Affairs dismissed the Interpol notice as “baseless”.

The US and the European Union sanctioned him over Iran’s deadly crackdown on nationwide protests following the killing of Mahsa Amini in 2022. Amini died in police custody after she was arrested for not fully covering her hair. 

Mohammad Ali Shabani, the editor-in-chief of the Middle East news outlet Amwaj, said in a post on X that Pakpour and Salami, Vahidi’s predecessors, were “schoolteachers compared to this guy”.

“The man is brutal. Hardliners wasting no time filling vacancies thanks to Israel,” Shabani added.

What impact is he likely to have on the IRGC?

When the late Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei appointed Vahidi as the deputy of the IRGC in December, one of his primary tasks was to ready the Iranian armed forces for another possible attack from the US and Israel.

His extensive experience across Iran’s government and security institutions gives him broad influence within the state, say analysts, an advantage that is especially significant now, after the deaths of many of Iran’s senior leaders and veteran military figures.

That challenge was underscored by comments from Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, who suggested in an interview with Al Jazeera that some Iranian military units have become “independent and somewhat isolated”, operating on general instructions rather than being tightly controlled by the civilian government.

Alfoneh told Al Jazeera that the former IRGC chief, Major General Mohammad-Ali Jafari, intentionally decentralised the IRGC to ensure “the organisation could survive decapitation and even the fall of the capital, Tehran”.

“Brigadier General Vahidi is well placed to coordinate the activities of such a decentralised structure with the help of key commanders and IRGC veterans, who together constitute an informal collective leadership within the organisation,” he added.

Nader Hashemi, director of the Alwaleed Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding at Georgetown University and author of Sectarianization: Mapping the New Politics of the Middle East, told Al Jazeera that Iran’s leaders are seeking “the most reliable and dependable candidate” as IRGC chief, someone who can maintain institutional continuity after the assassination of senior leaders and “inspire the rank and file to continue fighting despite overwhelming military odds”.

“The survival of the Islamic Republic is dependent on the IRGC,” Hashemi added. “They were created for a moment like this. The future of the Islamic Republic is dependent on their ability to fight back and survive this attack.”