Iran is playing musical chairs with leadership positions. None of these individuals have been sanctioned.

Excerpt

Iran’s Supreme National Security Council (SNSC) has a new secretary. After nearly a decade at the helm, Rear Admiral Ali Shamkhani stepped down from the SNSC on May 22 and was appointed to the Expediency and Discernment Council, a hybrid advisory and legislative body. Not surprisingly, Shamkhani’s replacement, Rear Admiral Ali Akbar Ahmadian, is another Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) member and Iran-Iraq War veteran.

Playing musical chairs with leadership positions like this provides Washington with opportunities to recalibrate and update its coercive economic measures, with the goal of punishing targets for past bad behavior in order to deter such behavior in the future. Ahmadian is already subject to US and international sanctions. However, there are other areas where the Joe Biden administration can levy targeted penalties against recently appointed but undesignated leaders of already sanctioned institutions in Iran.

Behnam Ben Taleblu is a senior fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) in Washington DC, where he contributes to its Iran Program and Center on Economic and Financial Power (CEFP).