Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei's decision to formalize six senior military and security postings within 48 hours is less a personnel story than the closing chapter of a five-month improvisation.Read together, the appointments announced on August 10 show a new supreme leader moving to convert an emergency wartime chain of command, cobbled together after Israeli and US strikes killed much of Iran's senior military leadership, into a permanent structure built around his own circle of trust.Rebuilding From The Top Down, TwiceThe scale of the vacancy Khamenei, who has not been seen in half a year, was filling is easy to lose in a list of names.Mohammad Baqeri, chief of the Armed Forces General Staff, was killed in the opening days of the 12-day war in June 2025. His successor, Abdolrahim Musavi, lasted barely a summer before he too was killed -- in the February 28 strike that also killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei himself. For roughly five months after that, Iran's Armed Forces General Staff had no chief at all; coordination defaulted to the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, then run by Ali Abdollahi.
Ahmad Vahidi made his first public appearance since the start of the 40-day war during a ceremony to honor slain Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in Tehran on July 3.
