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Iran's Khamenei Rebuilds A Command Structure Gutted By War
['Kian Sharifi']
Iran - Radio Free Europe / Radio Liberty
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.
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.
If Khatam al-Anbiya effectively folds into the General Staff, it marks a real centralization of Iran's wartime coordination apparatus under a single command rather than the semi-parallel structure that existed under the slain Ali Khamenei.