Surviving strike, Shamkhani resumes central role in Iran’s war room

DUBAI, Feb 25 (Reuters) – Ali Shamkhani, who taunted Israel after being pulled alive from the rubble of his Tehran home following a strike in June 2025, has survived at the centre of Iranian policy-making during its most testing military confrontations and diplomatic endeavours.

The 70-year-old former Revolutionary Guard commander is a trusted adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a high-stakes standoff with the U.S. that could determine whether the Islamic Republic, born from revolution in 1979, survives to half a century.

“Bastards, I am alive,” Shamkhani told Iranian filmmaker Javad Mogouei in an interview published in October, referring to his narrow escape from the Israeli strike that destroyed his home and evoking the 1973 Hollywood prison escape film Papillon.

This year, Khamenei confirmed Shamkhani as secretary of Iran’s newly established Defence Council, created after last year’s 12-day war in which Israel and the U.S. launched military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities and military sites.

His appointment returns him to the core of Iran’s decision-making apparatus. The Council is tasked with coordinating Iran’s wartime actions at a time when the U.S. is threatening new air strikes from nearby warships if negotiations do not produce a new deal curtailing Tehran’s nuclear programme. 

U.S. President Donald Trump briefly laid out his case for a possible attack on Iran in his State of the Union speech to Congress on Tuesday, saying he would not allow the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism to have a nuclear weapon.

Iran denies being a sponsor of terrorism and has long said it has no intention of building nuclear weapons, although Western nations and Israel believe that is the goal of what Tehran calls its peaceful nuclear programme.

“A ‘limited strike’ is an illusion. Any military action by U.S. – from any origin and any level – will be considered the start of war, and its response will be immediate, all out, and unprecedented, targeting heart of Tel Aviv and all those supporting the aggressor,” Shamkhani said on X in January 2026. 

A veteran of the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq war when the newly created Islamic Republic battled for survival, Shamkhani has served as a political adviser to Khamenei since his 2023 departure from the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC).

He led that council for a decade, including during Iran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers and Washington’s 2018 U.S. withdrawal from the agreement, an episode that reinforced his scepticism of the accord. 

The SNSC is the overarching body setting security and defence policies, and Shamkhani acted as Khamenei’s representative there during his tenure.

As tensions with Washington rise and speculation grows about Iran’s fate in the event of war, Shamkhani looks poised to wield influence among a politically astute cohort of former elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commanders.

FORGED IN WAR

Born in 1955 to an ethnic Arab family in oil-rich Khuzestan province, Shamkhani rose through IRGC ranks in the Iran-Iraq war, first commanding its forces in his home province which was the main battlefront against Saddam Hussein’s forces.  

By 1982, he was deputy to IRGC commander-in-chief Mohsen Rezaei, another Khuzestan native with whom he had participated in anti-shah activism in the 1970s. By the war’s end he had commanded the Guards’ ground forces while holding a cabinet post.

In 1989, the newly appointed Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei transferred him to the regular navy, which had been heavily damaged in clashes with U.S. forces. Within a year, he was given simultaneous command of both the regular and IRGC navies, overseeing a shift toward asymmetric maritime tactics designed to counter conventionally superior adversaries.

SECURITY OPERATOR AND DIPLOMATIC CHANNEL

Shamkhani has also been deployed in diplomatic roles.

As defence minister under reformist President Mohammad Khatami from 1997 to 2005, he made a landmark visit to Saudi Arabia – the first by an Iranian defence official since the 1979 revolution – contributing to a cautious easing of tensions between the regional rivals. 

More than two decades later he led talks, with Chinese mediation, that secured an agreement in 2023 restoring diplomatic ties with Riyadh, eight years after Iranian protesters stormed the Saudi embassy in Tehran.

His appointments have often coincided with moments when Tehran sought to engage adversaries without appearing to concede ground.

That balancing act was visible during last decade’s nuclear negotiations. While serving under President Hassan Rouhani, Shamkhani was involved in implementing the 2015 nuclear agreement and navigating its aftermath after the U.S. withdrew.

Rouhani later came to regret his appointment, believing Shamkhani had supported parliamentary measures that hardened Iran’s negotiating position by mandating higher uranium enrichment. 

In the October 2025 interview, Shamkhani went further, saying that in hindsight Iran should have considered building nuclear weapons in the 1990s, remarks that underscored his emphasis on deterrence after Iran sustained major air strikes from both Israel and the U.S. during the 12-day war.

SANCTIONS ECONOMY AND SCRUTINY

Shamkhani has over the years faced allegations and sanctions over his family’s own dealings. In 2020, he was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury, which also targeted his son Mohammad Hossein in 2025 for operating a network of vessels transporting sanctioned oil from Iran and Russia to international buyers. 

According to the treasury, the Shamkhani family’s “shipping empire” allowed it to accrue massive wealth and become a key actor facilitating Iran’s circumvention of U.S. sanctions. 

Shamkhani has not publicly commented on allegations of corruption. 

His daughter Fatemeh faced a backlash in 2025 over a widely shared video of her in a revealing gown at her opulent wedding, fuelling accusations of elite privilege and highlighting tensions between the ruling establishment’s conservative ethos and the lifestyles of those close to power.

(Reporting by Dubai Newsroom; Editing by Michael Georgy, William Maclean)