On August 10, 2026, Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei formally appointed Ahmad Vahidi commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, promoted him to major general, and ordered him to prepare the force for “powerful offensive operations against the enemy.” Six weeks later, on September 21, an Argentine federal judge sent him to trial for the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people.

The man commanding Iran’s most powerful institution is wanted abroad for mass murder. That is not an embarrassment the regime is trying to hide. It is a choice.

The road to command

Vahidi’s rise tracks the regime’s turn toward pure security. On December 31, 2025, days into the uprising that swept Iran, Ali Khamenei named him deputy commander-in-chief of the IRGC, a signal that the Guards would prioritize repression.

When IRGC commander Mohammad Pakpour was killed on February 28, the first day of the US-Israeli strikes, Vahidi became the force’s effective commander. He stayed out of public view for months. Mojtaba Khamenei’s August decree made it official. Vahidi got the job for his proven personal loyalty to the new Supreme Leader and his pedigree in intelligence and internal security.

A career built on operations abroad

Vahidi joined the IRGC in its earliest years and rose through its intelligence branch. From 1988 to the late 1990s, he commanded the Quds Force, the Guards’ external operations arm, in the years it built its networks of proxies and operatives abroad.

It was during that period that Hezbollah, with Iranian direction, bombed the AMIA center. Argentina obtained an Interpol red notice for Vahidi in 2007. In September 2026, Judge Daniel Rafecas charged him and six other Iranian officials, along with one Hezbollah operative, ordering a $500 million asset freeze against each. The judge classified the attack as a crime against humanity. His ruling found that planning began in August 1993 and that the decision was taken in Tehran by a state committee headed by the Supreme Leader. An appeals court upheld the use of trial in absentia, which will be the first in Argentina’s history.

Defense, then interior

Vahidi later moved into government. He served as defense minister from 2009 to 2013 under Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, overseeing the military industries behind Iran’s missile program. Under Ebrahim Raisi, he became interior minister in 2021, which put him in charge of the state’s internal security apparatus during the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests, when security forces killed hundreds of demonstrators.

Why his rise matters

Three things stand out. First, Vahidi’s expertise is the regime’s two main survival tools: repression at home and covert operations abroad. Putting him in charge of the IRGC signals that both will intensify, at a time when Tehran increasingly outsources its plots to criminal networks.

Second, he is not alone. Mohsen Rezaei, appointed secretary of the Supreme National Security Council a day before Vahidi’s promotion, is a co-defendant in the same AMIA case. Two men charged over the bombing now sit at the top of Iran’s security establishment.

Third, the promotion shows what Mojtaba Khamenei values. A new Supreme Leader with no independent base has chosen men whose loyalty is proven and whose international standing is already lost. They have no exit, no future outside the system, and every reason to defend it to the end.