Iran’s New IRGC Deputy Chief Is Responsible for American, Iranian, and Israeli Deaths

Ahmad Vahidi, a veteran of the Islamic Republic’s Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), was named its deputy commander on December 31, 2025, by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. The IRGC was established in 1979 to safeguard the Islamic Revolution and, by funding and directing its proxies, to export its ideology abroad. Vahidi is a seasoned veteran of both missions.

Vahidi’s timely appointment shows how the same system that brutalizes Iranians also targets Americans and Israelis, leaving all three with a common adversary. As nationwide anti-regime protests push beyond their first week, the Islamic Republic has turned to a longtime enforcer of internal repression since brutal crackdowns remain the regime’s answer at home. At the same time, as Washington and Jerusalem consider action against Iran’s growing ballistic missile program and domestic repression apparatus, Vahidi’s record links domestic repression with terror plots that have killed many.

Domestically, Vahidi has led the regime’s most severe repression campaigns against Iranians. In 2022, the U.S. Treasury redesignated Vahidi under Executive Order 13553 for his “oversight over all Law Enforcement Forces (LEF) deployed to subdue protests in Iran” that “resulted in thousands of deaths.” At the time, as Iran’s Minister of Interior, he not only shut down access to the internet but greenlighted violence against peaceful protesters in the wake of the tragic death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini, who was arrested for the “crime” of wearing a hijab improperly, and died in the custody of Iran’s Morality Police. The Treasury also noted that Vahidi warned Iranian women that security forces would punish those “breaking rules” on hijab compliance and has since threatened protesters while defending LEF’s crackdowns.

The European Union also sanctioned Vahidi in 2022 for his role in suppressing the protests, including the use of live ammunition against demonstrators and the arbitrary detention of journalists and activists.

Vahidi’s IRGC tenure is replete with efforts to kill Americans, and his appointment has coincided with threats issued by Tehran against U.S. personnel in the region. From 1988 to 1998, he served as commander of the Quds Force, the IRGC’s branch responsible for executing Tehran’s extraterritorial plots. The Quds Force is known for its brutal use of terrorism abroad through proxies such as Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and dozens of Shia militias in Iraq, Syria, and elsewhere. He played a role in Hezbollah’s 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut. Stationed there as peacekeepers, 241 U.S. servicemembers and 58 French paratroopers were killed.

He has been suspected in playing a role in the 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers in Saudi Arabia, carried out by the IRGC’s proxy Hezbollah; 19 U.S. Air Force personnel were killed and 540 others were injured. While he has not been formally charged in the case, he is said to have recruited the Hezbollah members involved in the attack.

Vahidi has also been linked to the 2008 coordinated attack on the U.S. embassy in Yemen, which resulted in 19 deaths, including six civilians and six Yemeni security personnel. While the attackers were identified as members of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, he reportedly leveraged his alliance with Osama Bin Laden’s deputy, Ayman Al Zawahiri, to carry out the attack. U.S. officials assert that Vahidi established a tactical alliance with senior al-Qaeda leaders in Sudan in the 1990s and met with Zawahiri several times.

The new IRGC deputy commander’s malign ambitions extend beyond the people of Iran and America. He oversaw the 1994 terrorist attack on the Argentine Israelite Mutual Association (AMIA) Jewish community center in Buenos Aires. He participated in the high-level meeting in August 1993 in Mashhad, Iran, when the decision was taken to bomb the AMIA. The bombing killed 85 people and wounded hundreds more. It was the deadliest attack in Argentina’s history. INTERPOL maintains a red notice for Vahidi for his role in the bombing, preventing him from traveling without the possibility of being apprehended. While he has sought to have the yoke of the red notice lifted, he will never be able to reputationally shed the black mark of terrorism by which he is defined.

As the Islamic Republic intensifies efforts to rebuild its ballistic missile capability, a program closely tied to nuclear weaponization and a direct threat to Israeli civilians, Vahidi’s oversight over missile proliferation is another clear signal to Jerusalem. As the defense minister administering entities sanctioned for ballistic missile developments, Vahidi was designated by the U.S. Treasury under Executive Order 13382 on June 16, 2010, for his ties to Iran’s nuclear and weapons of mass destruction (WMD) programs for which he was subject to secondary sanctions. He was also designated by the European Union. His proliferation-association designations were lifted in 2023 as part of the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) Iran deal.

The European Parliament has overwhelmingly passed multiple resolutions urging the European Council, to list the IRGC as a terrorist organization, most recently in April and May 2025. National parliaments including France have also passed resolutions calling for the European Union to take this step. Vahidi’s new role underscores the need for Europe to finally designate the IRGC as a foreign terrorist organization.

The challenges Vahidi faces now are significant. He must rebuild the revolutionary guards when many of its key leaders have been eliminated by Israeli precision strikes. Some of the IRGC’s proxies have been degraded or in some cases their leadership has been decapitated, though America’s policymakers would be remiss to dismiss their influence on lone wolves who are influenced by the Islamic Republic’s lethal anti-Western ideologies.

When he replenishes his ranks, Vahidi cannot be certain who may be loyal to him and who may not. While he has the trust of the supreme leader, for the people of Iran, Vahidi embodies the ultimate persecutor who will call for unity and a rallying around the flag. As the ideologically bankrupt Islamic Republic struggles to win over its own population, Vahidi’s role will likely not yield national unity. Rather, he will oversee the mass killing of Iranians as he quashes dissent to keep the regime alive a few years longer.

Ahmad Vahidi embodies how the Islamic Republic’s theocracy and support for terrorism have victimized Iranians, Americans, Israelis, and many others from around the globe. At a moment when Iranians are risking their lives to challenge the regime in the streets, charting a new future, Washington would miss the mark if it failed to coordinate with its allies to support the will of the Iranian people as they push this weakened regime toward collapse.

Toby Dershowitz is senior advisor at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD) where Janatan Sayeh is a research analyst. Follow them on X @tobydersh and @JanatanSayeh. Follow FDD on X @FDD and @FDD_Iran. FDD is a Washington, DC-based, nonpartisan research institute focusing on national security and foreign policy.