Mohsen Rezaei is many things (a biographical laundry list below). But if US intelligence believes the Islamic Republic has a central node or single point of failure, it would have, in the words of famed French diplomat Talleyrand, “learned nothing and forgotten nothing” from the upheaval of the last year. The Islamic Republic is a system that if it is going to be fought, will have to be decimated, not decapitated. This system is the legacy of Khamenei Sr. But beyond that, Rezaei’s rise is something that Washington and Jerusalem should be looking to mock, not placate or engage. A system (and that is what this regime is) with Rezaei in charge of one its 3 most important institutions (w/ the SLO and IRGC being the other 2) is a system with few elites and insiders left. And now, Rezaei in-depth: He was the longest serving IRGC Commander in the history of the Islamic Republic (1981-1997). He was the architect of many of Iran’s failed battlefield offensives in the latter half of the Iran-Iraq War (like Karbala-4). He is also the author of a book (Jang be Revayat Farmandeh) about his Iran-Iraq War experience which provides both insight and spin into some of the regime’s controversial wartime efforts. He has somehow avoided accountability and failed upwards in the Islamic Republic. He went on to serve as Secretary of the Expediency and Discernment Council, and later was a Vice-President in the Raisi government. And earlier this year, Rezaei replaced Zolghadr as SNSC Secretary and also became Khamenei Jr.’s representative on that council. Rezaei has an Interpol red notice against him and is wanted by the Argentine government over his involvement in the 1994 terror attack against the AMIA Jewish Community Center in Buenos Aires. Politically, Rezaei has run for the presidency 4 times, dropping out early before voting in 2005 and having 3 failed bids in 2009, 2013, and 2021. He is an avid proponent of hostage diplomacy. He is often the but of jokes on Persian-language social media when it comes to measures of the regime’s incompetence.