The philosopher who seeks vengeance

On March 1, a day after the U.S. and Israel started bombing Iran, U.S. President Donald Trump said in an interview that the Iranian leaders wanted to resume negotiations. “I have agreed to talk,” he said. A response came swiftly from Ali Larijani, Secretary of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council. “We will not negotiate with the Americans,” he wrote in a social media post. “You have set ablaze the hearts of the Iranian people,” he said in an interview, referring to the assassination of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Supreme Leader. “We will burn the hearts of our enemies.” In the days that followed, the U.S. and Israel stepped up their bombing campaign across the country. Iran retaliated by launching missiles at American bases in the Persian Gulf, and Israel. “The martyrdom of Imam Khamenei will exact a heavy price from you,” Mr. Larijani said on March 4. On March 6, both President Masoud Pezeshkian and Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said Iran was not immediately seeking a ceasefire. Mr. Trump then demanded “an unconditional surrender” from Iran’s rulers.

As the war unfolds with regional implications, Mr. Larijani has emerged as a defiant face and voice of the Iranian state. The Security Council he leads is one of the most important institutions of the state, especially during wartime. Founded in 1989 under the revised Constitution, the Council’s main responsibility is to define defence and national security policies. The secretary of the Security Council is roughly the equivalent of the National Security Adviser of India.

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Mr. Larijani came of age during the tremulous years of pre-revolutionary Iran. His father, Grand Ayatollah Hashem Amoli, a renowned Shia cleric, fled to Iraq in the 1930s to avoid persecution under the Shah. Ali Larijani was born in Najaf, the central Iraqi city which hosts the tomb of Imam Ali, in 1958. The Larijanis moved back to Iran in 1960. Ali Larijani studied in a religious seminary in Qom and got a bachelor of science degree in computer science from Aryamehr University of Technology, Tehran. For his Master’s and Ph.D., he switched to Western philosophy.

According to a profile of Mr. Larijani on the University of Tehran website, he has published three books on Immanuel Kant (all in Farsi) — The Mathematical Method in Kant’s Philosophy, Metaphysics and the Exact Sciences in Kant’s Philosophy, and Intuition and Synthetic A Priori Judgments in Kant’s Philosophy. He has also written a book on Descartes’ Discourse on the Method. He has additionally published on Saul Kripke — the American philosopher of language and modal logic — and David Lewis, the analytical metaphysician.

A member of the elite

Like many of his generation, who were inspired by the 1979 revolution, Mr. Larijani joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), the paramilitary organisation founded by Ayatollah Khomeini soon after the revolution. The IRGC grew into one of the most formidable institutions of the Islamic Republic during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war. Many of the veterans of the war emerged as future leaders of the country. During the administration of President Hashemi Rafsanjani (1989-97), Mr. Larijani was appointed as Minister of Culture and Islamic Guidance. In 1994, he became the director general of the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB), an arm of the Office of the Supreme Leader. This role brought him closer to the leader (rahbar), Ayatollah Khamenei. By the turn of the century, Mr. Larijani had become one of the key figures of the elite of the Islamic Republic, with close ties with the country’s conservative establishment.

Mahomud Ahmadinejad, the conservative who became President in 2005, appointed Mr. Larijani as the head of the Security Council and chief nuclear negotiator. As a nuclear negotiator, he had sent mixed signals. He once likened European incentives to abandon Iran’s nuclear programme to “exchanging a pearl for a candy bar”. But the same Mr. Larijani quit the Security Council in 2007 amid disagreements with Mr. Ahmadinejad, whose hardline policies had deepened Iran’s isolation in the world. It was a rare public rupture in the conservative camp.

After falling out with Mr. Ahmadinejad, Mr. Larijani moved to parliamentary politics. In 2008, he got elected to the Majles and became Speaker, a position he would hold till 2020. So when Hassan Rouhani pursued nuclear talks with the U.S. and signed a deal in 2015 with world powers, Mr. Larijani, as speaker, provided the much-needed legislative support for Mr. Rouhani. When the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), the nuclear deal, was put to debate in the Majles, Mr. Larijani gave just 20 minutes to discuss it for Parliament’s 290 members, before pushing it through.

In domestic politics, he has been associated with the principalist (hardline) camp. He was supported by the Islamic Society of Engineers, a principalist political organisation. In 2005, when he stood for the presidential elections for the first time, his bid was supported by the Council for Coordination of the Forces of the Revolution, an umbrella group of conservative organisations. He ranked sixth, winning only 5.94% of votes, but became the Security Council Secretary. In 2021 and 2024, he registered for the presidential election, but his nomination was rejected by the powerful Guardian Council. But Masoud Pezeshkian, who won the 2024 presidential election, brought Mr. Larijani back as the Security Council chief.

Security czar

For years, Iran had built a sprawling network of allies in West Asia, both as a deterrent and as an offensive strategy. Iranians called it the “forward defence” doctrine. The champion of forward defence was Qassem Soleimani, the Quds Force general who was assassinated by the U.S. in January 2020. When General Soleimani was killed, Mr. Larijani warned that the killing would alter the political balance of the region and that the U.S. “will be held accountable” for this “brutal act”.

“The response to Haj Qassem Soleimani’s blood should be measures to make American forces flee from the region,” he said, according to Tehran Times. But the Iranian response was a token strike at a U.S. military base in Iraq. U.S. troops continued to stay in the region.

In April 2025, amid rising tensions between Israel and Iran, Mr. Larijani said if attacked, Iran would have “no choice” but to get nuclear weapons. “We are not moving towards nuclear weapons, but if you do something wrong in the Iranian nuclear issue, you will force Iran to move towards that because it has to defend itself,” he said. In two months, Israel started bombing Iran, triggering the 12-day war. The U.S. joined Israel on June 22 in bombing Iran’s nuclear facilities. In the months that followed the June war, Mr. Larijani, as a confidant of the Supreme Leader, emerged as the go-to man in the system. While President Pezeshkian’s role was limited to running the day-to-day matters of the country, Mr. Larijani became the security czar.

He endorsed the nuclear talks that opened in January following protests in Iran. The U.S. and Iran held three rounds of talks. On February 27, Oman’s Foreign Minister, who was mediating the talks, said a deal was within reach. Within hours the U.S. and Israel launched the war, killing Khamenei and several other top leaders. Amid war and a political vacuum, a furious Iran responded with its drones and ballistic missiles. “The brave soldiers and the great nation of Iran will deliver an unforgettable lesson to the hellish international oppressors,” Mr. Larijani said in the middle of the war. Eight days into the war, Iran has been hit hard by the U.S. and Israel. Tehran has also retaliated by escalating its attacks. Donald Trump has demanded an unconditional surrender. But the IRGC, the revolutionary organisation where Mr. Larijani cut his teeth, has warned of a “prolonged war”.

Published – March 07, 2026 06:34 pm IST