Iran Appoints Interpol-Wanted Suspect Behind 1994 Bombing as Head of Supreme National Security Council

Iran has appointed , a former Revolutionary Guard commander wanted by Interpol over the 1994 bombing of a Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people, as head of its Supreme National Security Council, the presidency confirmed on Sunday.

The council is Iran's top strategic decision-making body, coordinating defence, foreign policy and security matters across the regime. Rezaei, 71, is the second official to take the post since the assassination of Ali Larijani by Israel in mid-March, during the early weeks of the war between the US, Israel and Iran.

Wartime Shake-up at Iran's Top Security Body

Presidency spokesman Mehdi Tabatabaei said on X that President Masoud Pezeshkian had appointed Rezaei following the resignation of Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr as council secretary. Zolghadr will now serve as political adviser to Mojtaba Khamenei, son and successor of the late Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed on the war's first day.

Israel's military had described Larijani as Iran's 'de facto leader' following the supreme leader's death. Mojtaba Khamenei was reportedly injured in the same strike that killed Larijani and has not appeared in public since, fuelling speculation over who now controls Tehran's decision-making.

The council, often compared to a politburo, is where rival factions within Iran's leadership contest policy on war, diplomacy and the nuclear programme.

Several senior officials have died during the conflict, and Rezaei's appointment points to a harder-edged, military-minded leadership as Iran tests international patience in the Gulf. Earlier this month he warned Iran would not tolerate an 'unauthorised route' through the Strait of Hormuz, which Tehran has obstructed since the war began. In July he said control of the waterway was 'more important than dozens of atomic bombs'.

Interpol Red Notice and the Amia Bombing

Rezaei led the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, designated a terrorist organisation by the United States, from 1981 to 1997, before holding a series of senior political roles, most recently as military adviser to Mojtaba Khamenei.

He has also been the subject of an Interpol Red Notice since 2007 over the 1994 bombing of the Asociación Mutual Israelita Argentina (AMIA) community centre in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people. Argentine court records attribute the attack to Hezbollah operatives acting on Iranian orders. Late prosecutor Alberto Nisman alleged in a 2006 indictment that the decision to strike was taken at a meeting in Mashhad in August 1993, under a body he called the 'Committee for Special Operations'.

Nisman named Ayatollah Khamenei as head of that committee and said the order to attack came from Khamenei and then-president Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. He placed Rezaei, then IRGC chief, within Rafsanjani's intelligence office, alleging Rezaei co-authored the plan and that his role 'extended to the implementation phase of the attack'. Rezaei denies wrongdoing.

The notice has previously affected his movements. In 2022, Argentina asked Qatar to detain Rezaei during a visit, citing a judicial order describing his 'proven participation' in the meeting where the attack was decided. Qatar did not act on the request. His attendance that same year at the inauguration of Nicaragua's president drew condemnation from Argentina's foreign ministry, which called his presence 'an affront to Argentine justice and to the victims' of the bombing.

Rezaei's appointment places a man accused of orchestrating one of the deadliest antisemitic attacks outside Israel at the centre of Iran's wartime security apparatus, a decision Western governments are likely to scrutinise closely.