Mohsen Rezaei was the Commander-in-Chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) during the Iran-Iraq War.
Mohsen Rezaei, whose full name is Sabzevar Rezaei Mirqaed, was born in September 1954 in a village near Masjed Soleyman⁠[1] in Khuzestan Province.⁠[2] His father, Haj Najaf, and his mother, Bibi Zanan, were from the Bakhtiari tribe.⁠[3] He finished primary school and part of his secondary education at Sina High School in Masjed Soleyman. When he was to begin studying at a technical school run by the National Iranian Oil Company in 1969, Rezaei moved to the city of Ahvaz.⁠[4] In 1973, at the age of 19, he was arrested due to his political activities. After spending five months in solitary confinement and one month in the general ward of Ahvaz Prison, he completed his studies at the technical school while secretly maintaining contact with fighters in Khorramshahr, Dezful, and Tehran.⁠[5] Together with several friends from Khuzestan, such as Ali Shamkhani and Gholamali Rashid (martyred), he formed a group called Mansouroun and began clandestine activities against the Pahlavi regime.⁠[6]
Rezaei arrived in Tehran in 1974 to study mechanical engineering at Iran University of Science and Technology. That same year, he married Masoumeh Khadang.⁠[7] They have three daughters and two sons.⁠[8]
Between 1974 and 1978, as SAVAK intensified its pressure on public resistance groups, Mohsen Rezaei was forced to leave university and his job and go into hiding.⁠[9] With the help of fighters in other cities, he launched branches of Mansouroun guerrilla fighters in seven provinces and seventeen counties.⁠[10] On the eve of the Islamic Revolution and Imam Khomeini’ s return to Iran, Mansouroun was responsible for protecting him.⁠[11]
In 1979, on behalf of the Mansouroun group, Rezaei joined the Central Council of the Mojahedin of the Islamic Revolution Organization, which was formed by the merger of seven Muslim armed groups. Also, in the same year, with Imam Khomeini’ s support, he established the Intelligence and Political Studies Unit as a security and intelligence organization within the IRGC. He headed the IRGC’ s intelligence division for two years,⁠[12] during which one of his notable achievements was the arrest of the Forqan Group members.⁠[13] He was also a member of the twelve-person committee that drafted the statute of the IRGC.⁠[14]
In 1980, with the beginning of the Iran-Iraq War, Mohsen Rezaei went to Ahvaz, where he took up his post at the Gulf area⁠[15] as the headquarters directing the IRGC’ s war efforts in the south.⁠[16] Through his representative, Hassan Baqeri — who had established the military intelligence apparatus there— Rezaei regularly conveyed frontline intelligence reports to the Supreme Defense Council in Tehran,⁠[17] the body responsible for coordinating and integrating the country’ s wartime and operational policies.
In September 1981,⁠[18] at the age of 27,⁠[19] Mohsen Rezaei was appointed by Imam Khomeini (ra) as the fifth Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC.⁠[20] Shortly after he took command, and following the appointment of Ali Sayyad Shirazi as Commander of the Army Ground Forces in October 1981, a joint command structure was established between the IRGC and the Army. This cooperation led to successful operations⁠[21] such as Thamen al-Aemmah (as), Tariq al-Quds, Fath al-Mubin, and Beit al-Muqaddas between October 1981 and June 1982.⁠[22] However, after the failure of Operation Ramazan⁠[23] and during the period of setbacks 1982– 1984,⁠[24] IRGC commanders pushed for independent operations separate from the Army.⁠[25] To preserve unity, Imam Khomeini (ra) symbolically joined the hands of Sayyad Shirazi and Mohsen Rezaei and asked them never to separate.⁠[26] Nevertheless, after Operation Badr — the last joint IRGC-Army operation — the course of the war evolved in such a way that, although the two organizations continued to support each other in execution, they planned and conducted their operations independently.⁠[27]
With the establishment of separate command structures for the IRGC and the Army, the fronts once again gained momentum,⁠[28] and the war entered a period of victories from the capture of Al-Faw to Karbala 8 (1985– 1987).⁠[29] The successes of the final three years of the war,⁠[30] including the capture of Al-Faw, Shalamcheh, and parts of northern Iraq, led to the issuance of UN Security Council Resolution 598 — most of whose provisions were favorable to Iran — and ultimately paved the way for ending the war.⁠[31] In 1989, Rezaei received the Fath Medal (First Class) from the Commander-in-Chief.⁠[32]
Mohsen Rezaei served as Commander-in-Chief of the IRGC for 16 years, from 1981 to 1997.⁠[33] During this period, he changed the IRGC’ s command from a collective council system into a unified command structure.⁠[34] He established the IRGC’ s combat organization and, on Imam Khomeini’ s order, structured it into three branches: the Ground Forces, Navy, and Air Force. In the meantime, Imam Hussain (as) University, Baqiyatollah (as) University of Medical Sciences, and Khatam al-Anbiya (pbuh) Construction Headquarters were founded to utilize the IRGC’ s engineering units.⁠[35]
After the end of the Iran-Iraq War, Mohsen Rezaei proposed the formation of the Quds Force with the aim of supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon.⁠[36] Although he studied mechanical engineering at Iran University of Science and Technology before the Islamic Revolution, Rezaei switched to economics after the Iran– Iraq War. He completed his bachelor’ s degree at the University of Tehran, pursued a master’ s program focused on monetary and banking policies, and ultimately earned his PhD in economics from the University of Tehran.⁠[37]
In 1997, Mohsen Rezaei stepped down from his position in the IRGC and was appointed Secretary of the Expediency Discernment Council. Since 2000, he has served as the chair of the Council’ s commission for macroeconomics and commerce.⁠[38] Eighteen years later, in early 2015,⁠[39] he rejoined the IRGC, seeking to convey its hard‑earned experience to the next generation.⁠[40] He served as the Vice President of Iran for Economic Affairs⁠[41] between 2021 and 2023.
Mohsen Rezaei is currently the Secretary of the Supreme Council for Economic Coordination.
The book Doran-e Mobarezeh (The Era of Struggle) is an oral history of Mohsen Rezaei. The book Bohran-e Goroohha-ye Siyasi (The Crisis of Political Groups (From the Rah Oral History Series)) and the collection of his speeches on the war compiled in the book Jang be Ravayat-e Farmandeh (The War as Told by the Commander) have also been published.