Amir Farshad Ebrahimi, a former Iranian intelligence officer who defected to the West, assessed that the losses of senior commanders in the 2025-2026 wars caused a crisis of experienced leadership. He wrote that Mojtaba Khamenei dismantled the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, merging it into the General Staff under a unified command structure.
Amir Farshad Ebrahimi, a former Iranian intelligence official who defected to the West more than a decade ago, published an analysis Wednesday afternoon attributing what he described as a collapse of Iran's military command structure to the heavy losses of senior commanders during the 2025 and 2026 wars against Israel. According to Ebrahimi, the conflicts resulted in the deaths of the Chief of the General Staff and three successive commanders of the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, creating a crisis of experienced leadership. He wrote that Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei responded by dismantling the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters in its previous format and merging it into the General Staff under a unified command led by the Chief of Staff, effectively creating a new joint command structure.
This analysis follows a series of reports The Zioneer published on Monday, August 10. At 18:45 Jerusalem, it was first reported that Mojtaba Khamenei appointed Ali Abdollahi—then commander of the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters—as the new commander of the Iranian Armed Forces, replacing Abdolrahim Mousavi, who was killed in the war. Subsequent reports that evening confirmed the merger of the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters and the Armed Forces Headquarters into a single command body, with Abdollahi as Chief of the General Staff. By the end of the evening, security analyst Yair Goldblatt reported that the Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters had been fully merged into the General Staff, dissolving its separate operational identity.
The Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters had served as the supreme unified command responsible for operational coordination between the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the regular military (Artesh). As The Zioneer reported on August 10, this restructuring centralized operational command under an IRGC-aligned leadership, consolidating control after the loss of several senior commanders in the ongoing conflict.
Ebrahimi's assessment provides external corroboration of the merger and its rationale, though his claims—from a defector based abroad—remain unattributable to current Iranian decision-makers. It remains unconfirmed whether the new unified command structure has fully resolved the leadership vacuum or if further restructuring is anticipated.
4 developments
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- StrongKhatam al-Anbiya chief pledges allegiance to Mojtaba Khamenei, threatens US with 'devastating response'
- StrongIran's Khatam al-Anbiya commander: US pushing towards regional war
- StrongIran's supreme command claims its 'crushing response' forced US to halt strikes in south
Source and signal
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