Ali Larijani: The Man Behind Iran’s War

CrossFireArabia
March 11, 2026

As war reshapes Iran’s leadership landscape, veteran power broker Ali Larijani has emerged as a central figure coordinating strategy and continuity.

Key Takeaways

Ali Larijani, a veteran Iranian statesman and former parliament speaker, now plays a central role in Iran’s wartime decision-making.
Reports indicate Larijani is coordinating strategic policy through Iran’s Supreme National Security Council during the ongoing conflict.
His decades-long career spans the Revolutionary Guards, state media leadership, nuclear diplomacy, and parliamentary politics.
Larijani is widely regarded as a pragmatic conservative with deep ties to Iran’s clerical and security establishments.
In a moment of leadership transition, Larijani has emerged as one of the key figures ensuring institutional continuity in Iran.

Iran’s Pragmatic Power Broker

Few figures embody the institutional continuity of the Islamic Republic as clearly as Ali Larijani, a veteran politician whose career spans Iran’s military, media, parliament, and national security establishment.

Born in Najaf, Iraq, in 1958, Larijani comes from one of Iran’s most influential clerical families. His father, Ayatollah Mirza Hashem Amoli, was a prominent religious scholar, and several members of the Larijani family have held senior positions within the Iranian state.

This combination of clerical pedigree and political experience would later position Larijani as one of the Islamic Republic’s most enduring insiders.

Revolutionary Guards

Larijani began his career in the early years following the 1979 Islamic Revolution, serving within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.

Over the following decades, he moved steadily through the ranks of Iran’s political and administrative institutions. He held a series of posts within government ministries before becoming head of Iran’s state broadcasting organization, Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), in 1994.

Larijani remained in that position for nearly a decade, overseeing the country’s powerful state media apparatus during a critical period in Iran’s political development.

In 2004, he was appointed security adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, a move that placed him closer to the core of Iran’s decision-making structure.

Nuclear Negotiator

Larijani’s national prominence expanded significantly in 2005 when he became secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, Iran’s top strategic policy body.

In that capacity, he also served as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator, representing the country in early talks with Western powers over its nuclear program. Although he later stepped down from that role, Larijani remained central to Iran’s political landscape.

From 2008 to 2020, he served as speaker of Iran’s parliament, the Majles, one of the longest tenures in the history of the position.

During that period, he played an important role in shaping legislation related to Iran’s nuclear policy, economic governance, and relations with the outside world. He was also instrumental in helping shepherd the 2015 nuclear agreement with world powers through the Iranian political system.

Pragmatic Tendencies

Ideologically, Larijani is associated with Iran’s principlist conservative camp, which broadly supports the political framework of the Islamic Republic.

Yet analysts frequently describe him as a pragmatic figure capable of navigating Iran’s complex factional landscape. Larijani has often positioned himself as a bridge between competing political camps within the Iranian system.

His reputation for strategic thinking and bureaucratic competence has made him a trusted figure within the country’s governing institutions.

Wartime Decision-Making

Today, Larijani once again stands near the center of Iran’s strategic apparatus.

Serving as secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, he plays a key role in coordinating Iran’s national security and defense policies during one of the most volatile periods in the country’s modern history.

The position places him at the intersection of Iran’s political leadership, security institutions, and military command structures.

As Iran navigates war and internal leadership transition, Larijani’s long experience across multiple branches of the state has made him one of the most influential figures guiding the country’s response.

(The Palestine Chronicle)

News

Iran Moves to Major Escalation

CrossFireArabia
March 8, 2026

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard plans to increase drone attacks by 20 percent and double strategic missile operations amid escalating regional conflict.

Key Developments

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) plans to increase drone operations by 20 percent and missile operations by 100 percent.
The escalation comes as part of Iran’s ongoing military response to US-Israeli attacks on Iranian territory.
Iranian forces launched the 28th wave of “Operation True Promise 4,” deploying new-generation missiles against Israeli targets.
Israeli media reported a missile carrying cluster munitions that dispersed over multiple locations in Tel Aviv.
Iranian commanders say military operations will expand further in the coming hours and days.

Planned Escalation

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) is preparing to significantly expand its offensive operations, including a major increase in ballistic missile launches and drone deployments, according to informed sources cited by Iran’s Fars News Agency.

The sources said the escalation will begin overnight and is intended to intensify Iran’s military response to the ongoing US-Israeli war on the country.

According to the report, Iran will increase the scale of its drone operations by up to 20 percent while doubling the use of strategic missiles.

Iranian officials frame the move as part of what they describe as a broader confrontation with the administration of US President Donald Trump and the White House.

Sources quoted by Fars said the decision was taken in order to strengthen deterrence and ensure what they described as a decisive response to any military aggression targeting Iran’s interests or population.

The announcement comes as the Israeli-US agression on Iran continues to escalate, with repeated missile exchanges and attacks reported across several fronts in the region.

Iranian authorities say that since the start of the joint US-Israeli campaign on February 28, more than 1,200 people have been killed in Iran, including around 200 children and approximately 200 women, while more than 10,000 civilians have been injured.

Missile Operations

Iranian state television also confirmed that the country’s armed forces launched the 28th wave of missile strikes as part of the ongoing military campaign known as Operation True Promise 4.

According to the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, the latest wave involved the deployment of new-generation missiles and targeted sites in the cities of Beersheba and Tel Aviv.

The IRGC said four heavy-warhead Kheibar missiles were used during the operation.

Iranian military officials stated that the strikes were part of continuing attacks against Israeli targets as well as sites connected to US forces in the region.

In addition to the missile strikes, Iranian forces reportedly targeted the infrastructure of Al-Azraq Air Base, which Iranian officials described as one of the largest offensive bases used by US-aligned forces.

The IRGC said the scale and depth of Iranian attacks would expand in the coming hours and days.

Iranian state media also reported that two waves of missiles were launched within minutes of each other during the latest round of attacks.

Tel Aviv Impact

Israeli media reported that one of the Iranian missiles carried a warhead containing more than 16 cluster munitions.

According to those reports, the missile fragmented into multiple explosive sub-munitions over the skies of Tel Aviv.

Fragments reportedly fell across at least sixteen different locations in the city.

Israeli reports said six people were injured after debris from the missile fell across the affected areas.

The missile strike triggered powerful explosions in Tel Aviv and activated air-raid sirens in multiple areas, including Jerusalem and northern regions near the Lebanese border.

Sirens were also reported in the towns of Dovev and Baram amid concerns that drones might infiltrate Israeli airspace.

The incidents were reported within minutes of each other as part of what Israeli media described as concentrated Iranian missile barrages.

Military Statements

Iranian military commanders have continued to signal that the country intends to sustain and expand its military operations.

Major General Ali Abdollahi, commander of Iran’s Khatam al-Anbiya Central Headquarters, said Iran would continue the war until its enemies were forced to retreat.

“Our weapons today are more advanced than before and have high precision and flexibility,” Abdollahi said.

He dismissed claims that foreign governments know the size of Iran’s missile arsenal.

“The enemies said they know the number of our missiles,” Abdollahi stated. “We tell them that they should count the missiles on the battlefield.”

The commander also said Iran had repaired vulnerabilities identified after earlier attacks.

“The armed forces have restored the gaps after the recent aggression,” he said, adding that Iranian forces are deployed across the battlefield with what he described as high morale.

Abdollahi accused US and Israeli forces of targeting civilians inside Iran.

“The malicious enemy targets innocent Iranians in their homes and students in their schools,” he said.

He added that Iran would focus its attacks on military centers and equipment.

Iran’s armed forces also reported targeting specific locations in Haifa and Tel Aviv as well as US military sites, including facilities at Camp Arifjan in Kuwait.

Iranian officials said the strikes were carried out using suicide drones as part of what they described as the country’s response to the ongoing US-Israeli aggression.

The war, which erupted after the US-Israeli attacks on Iran at the end of February, continues to expand across multiple fronts as both sides intensify military operations.

Palestine Chronicle

Opinion

The US General Who Swallowed His Own Truth

CrossFireArabia
March 6, 2026

By Jassem Al-Azzawi

General Dan Kaine, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, delivered a confidential warning to President Trump with the utmost candor—the kind of candor that democracies rely on and empires routinely ignore. He said: “We don’t have enough ammunition to win this war. It’s not going to be pretty.” This warning wasn’t born of cowardice; it was the last vestige of institutional integrity that still flickers within the halls of American military power.

Trump’s response was that of a circus clown, not a commander-in-chief. Through his “Truth Social” platform—that distorted mirror of American political life—he dismissed the warning with the arrogance of a street vendor, saying: “Oh, no, no, no. If we do it, we’ll win easily.” Thus, a sober assessment became mere publicity, and caution a lie.

But the biggest lie came later. When Kaine’s warning leaked, Trump not only rejected it but completely reversed it. With the confidence of a man who has never been held accountable for anything, he told the American public the general had said the exact opposite—that the United States had plenty of missiles, munitions, and everything else. “That’s not what he said at all,” Trump declared, putting words of false victory in the mouth of a man who had offered only warnings.

And General Cain remained silent

This silence is not just a footnote in this story; it is the story itself. By remaining silent, Cain allowed the American public to absorb the falsehood as truth. He did not say: “No, Mr. President, that’s not what I said.” He did not invoke his oath, nor the soldiers who would pay with their lives for the gap between political rhetoric and logistical reality. He chose the safety of silence over the danger of truth, and in doing so, he betrayed not only himself but the Republic. This is the rot at the heart of American militarism.

As historian Andrew Bacevich has long warned, the professional military has become more of an instrument of imperial ambition than a defender of democratic values, with senior officers more concerned with their next post than with the Constitution they swore to uphold. Kaine’s silence was not a mere slip of the tongue; it was a symptom of a deeper malaise.

The logistical picture Kaine described in private was not theoretical; the calculations were unforgiving.

Current stockpiles of interceptor missiles and precision munitions could not sustain a prolonged air campaign against a country three times the size of Iraq. The Wall Street Journal documented a “worrying gap” in U.S. missile stockpiles, noting that reserves were “far below” the requirements of intensive and sustained operations. Pentagon contractors were instructed to “double or even quadruple” production of Patriot, SM-6, and precision-strike missiles—a tacit admission that the arsenal built for Cold War scenarios is inadequate for the war being fought today.

Consider Gaza: Israel, the most heavily armed military power in the Middle East, with complete air and naval dominance, has turned a tiny coastal strip into a moon-like landscape of devastation over two and a half years, yet it has not broken Hamas. Gaza is only 37 kilometers long. Iran, on the other hand, is a nation of 90 million people, with mountainous terrain, strategic depth, fortified infrastructure, and a combat-hardened Revolutionary Guard. The idea that it will collapse under a few weeks of American airstrikes is not strategy; it is wishful thinking. “God help us if this continues, if it gets to four weeks,” Colonel Daniel Davis warned on the Deep Dive podcast. He was speaking in military terms, and the same prayer applies. Politically.

When Trump now raises the prospect of sending ground troops, he is not escalating from a position of strength, but rather improvising from a position of denial. Admitting that air power and missiles alone cannot achieve the political objective is an admission that the original objective was never honestly assessed. This is the pattern of American wars at the end of an empire: Glittering promises, disastrous calculations, and then a grim and horrific reckoning paid in blood by those who had no seat at the table where the lies were told.

The costs are already piling up—not just in the currency of munitions and riches, but in the currency that empires always ultimately spend and regret most: credibility. America’s word, already devalued by two decades of contrived justifications for war, is getting cheaper by the day.

Democracies can tolerate miscalculations, and they can tolerate bad presidents, but what they cannot long tolerate is the institutionalization of a culture where the truth is whispered behind closed doors and swallowed whole in front of cameras. When the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff allows his words to be weaponized for propaganda — when the man in charge of counting missiles refuses to correct a president who pretends they are plentiful — something far greater than military credibility collapses.

What is crumbling is the social contract between the governed and those who send them to their deaths.

Caine’s silence was not cautious; it was complicity. And in an imperial machine suffering from a shortage of ammunition and a shortage of truth, complicity is the only resource that seems inexhaustible, because when the missiles finally run out, slogans won’t replace them.

Reality will.

Al-Azzawi is an Iraqi writer who contributed this piece to Al Rai Al Youm which was translated and appeared in crossfire.com

Opinion

‘They Don’t Know Iran’s Military Lexicon’: First Six Days of The Aggression

CrossFireArabia
March 5, 2026

By Abdul Bari Atwan

They truly don’t know Iran. By this, I mean the Israelis and the US, and even some Arab leaders, none of whom dared to condemn the aggression. But the aggression entered its sixth day without the regime falling, and/or the new interim leadership rushing to the nearest negotiating table to surrender. The following factors need to be considered.

The battlefields:

First: The downing of an advanced American fighter jet, the F-15, by Iranian missiles in the west of Iran, a firstever development. This suggests the Iranian military leadership may have developed new missiles capable of achieving this feat, or they acquired them from their Chinese and Russian allies, or both, particularly the Russian S-400 and S-500 missile systems.

Second: The entry of Hezbollah’s ballistic missiles into the arena, striking deep inside Israel, specifically Tel Aviv and Haifa, for the first time after 15 months of restraint and the rebuilding of its military arsenal, and/or what was destroyed during the Israeli aggression. This means that no area in the Zionist entity will be safe.

Third: The fiery speech delivered by Sheikh Naim Qassem, Secretary-General of Hezbollah, containing strong unprecedented tone statements most notably: “We will not surrender and we will defend our land, no matter the sacrifices and despite the disparity in capabilities. We will not surrender.”

Fourth: The introduction of the fastest “infiltrating” drone into the Iranian Air Force for the first time. Named “Hadid 110,” it has a speed of 517 km/h and, according to Western military experts, is considered more efficient than its sister drone, “Shahed,” which performed well deep inside Israel. Its production costs only $35,000, while shooting it down costs $4 million.

Fifth: Every day of resistance by the Iranian army and people costs the occupying state approximately $1 billion. As for America, the costs of the war has already nearly spiralled to $160 billion in the first six days. These preliminary estimates are likely to rise, especially after the bombing of aircraft carriers and the destruction of warships, the increasing number of dead and wounded, the largest military buildup since the Iraq War, and the rise in energy prices.

Sixth: The fulfillment of the promise to close the Strait of Hormuz, which means delivering two fatal blows. The first is to the Western economy because oil and gas prices would likely reach record-breaking figures, and the second, for the Arab states who host the US military bases. Closing the Strait means preventing their oil and gas exports from reaching global markets, and the losses will increase while oil and gas revenues decrease depending on the war’s duration and developments.

The Iranians wanted from the outset a regional war of attrition with no end in sight in direct opposite to the new American warefare military doctrine, which aims for short, swift, and clean wars (without American casualties). The Iranians resolved to bomb all those cooperating with the aggression in the region. This new Iranian theory was best and most clearly expressed by Sheikh Naim Qassem when he called on the Israeli army to prepare for many days of fighting with all available means.

Defeat, surrender, and raising the white flag, individually or collectively, have no place in the Iranian military and political lexicon. In the first six days, the Iranian army launched 500 hypersonic missiles with multiple cluster warheads and more than 2,000 drones, resulting in the displacement of more than 7 million settlers to shelters and tunnels, and the destruction of large parts of Tel Aviv and Haifa.

Neither the 47-year-long starvation siege, nor three Israeli-American aggressions within a few years, nor the incitement of popular protests and the planting of spies among the protesters, nor the deployment of aircraft carriers and warships, nor inflation and the collapse of the national currency, succeeded in defeating the mighty and unwavering Iranian will, and consequently, in toppling or changing the regime.

Our proof is they baffled the Americans in negotiations that lasted more than two years in Vienna and in several other Arab and European capitals, and they never conceded. They rejected all American conditions, starting with halting enrichment and handing over 460 kilograms of highly enriched uranium, and even refusing to allow the inclusion of the Iranian missile industry or severing ties with resistance factions on the negotiating table.

Yes, arrogance, conceit, and the unfortunate complicity of some Arabs blinded them to the true nature of Iran, and they will pay a very heavy price, the most prominent feature of which will be the destruction of all Israeli gas infrastructure. In the Mediterranean, water and electricity stations, and the lack of distinction between settler and soldier, many assumptions have changed after the massacre of the children’s school in southern Iran… and time will tell.

This opinion was written in Arabic by the chief editor of Alrai Al Youm Abdul Bari Atwan and translated for crossfirearabia.com

Opinion

War and The Blame Game

CrossFireArabia
March 5, 2026

By Khairi Janbek

Undoubtedly, the blame game is not a concept limited to the Middle East, neither the notion of who started the conflict nor who will end it.

However in this context, one wishes to talk about the current conflict which is becoming a chaos beyond the Middle East and specifically about Iran and its contribution to this chaos. Going back, and from the onset of the Iranian Revolution of 1979, chaos has always been part and parcel of its revolutionary ideology, reviving the old Shia-Sunni conflict, attempting to be the representative of the Shia of the world; most importantly, the concept of export of the revolution whenever the opportunity comes around.

But this phase ended with the end of the war with Iraq, but saying ended may well be too deterministic, because chaos under Iranian sponsorship emerged again after the fall of the Saddam Hussein regime in the form of what became known as the Iran-dominated Shiite Crescent. However with the set backs of last year, the chaos sponsorship of Iran to a back step, to relaunch again with projectiles all around creating a chaos in the region and beyond.

Essentially at this juncture, all the affected countries seem to have left the conflict to Israel and the US to deal with, maybe to the possibility that those parties do not believe that this conflict will be conclusive, or a feeling that whether they participate in the conflict or not, they will neither be seen in good favour by the United States and/or Israel.

But also having said that, there is also plenty of scepticism in the region, because each time there is a conflict involving the USA, there is always a big possibility that the US stops in the middle and allows its adversaries to recover and pick up, which means putting themselves in an adversarial position vis a vis recovered forces which they may have to face.

In fact whether by fluke or by good thinking, not to declare the war aims in this conflict may turn out to be a wise move, as this war may indeed end as one is writing these words, with the declaration by everyone that the war aims have been achieved. But as a final word, one feels Iranian induced chaos must be met with a world response.

Dr Janbek is a Jordanian columnist based in Paris, France.