OPINION — In the wake of the assassination of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh in Tehran, Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian announced last week that Esmail Khatib would remain as intelligence minister. This potentially signals a continued revival of Iran’s Ministry of Intelligence (MOIS). Khatib, with strong ties to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei and Iran’s chief justice, is set to reassert his ministry’s role as the head of Iran’s intelligence community, potentially emerging from the shadow of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) in domestic intelligence operations.
Despite leading Iran’s primary intelligence agency, Khatib has not shown contrition for the failure to prevent Haniyeh’s assassination. Just weeks before the attack, Khatib boasted about his ministry’s successes in countering terrorist threats and improving cooperation among Iran’s intelligence agencies. In mid-July, he claimed that a tenfold increase in the ministry’s budget under the late President Ebrahim Raisi had expanded Iran’s security infrastructure, enhancing MOIS effectiveness, particularly against Israel. Throughout 2023 and into 2024, Khatib frequently touted successful MOIS operations that disrupted networks allegedly directed by Israel, the Islamic State of Iraq and ash-Sham (ISIS), and other dissident groups. Four days before Haniyeh’s death, Khatib reported the dismantling of another Mossad network, calling it a turning point for the ministry.
Despite these now seemingly overstated claims, Khatib and the MOIS have largely avoided blame because Haniyeh was attacked at an IRGC guesthouse amid heightened security in the capital. Responsible for protecting Iranian and visiting VIPs, the IRGC clearly failed in its duty to secure the guesthouse. It has since taken over the investigation, arresting more than two dozen people, including senior intelligence officers, military officials, and guesthouse staff. Khatib, meanwhile, has limited his comments to accusing the United States of giving Israel a green light for the assassination.
This major security failure, though humiliating for the regime, could ultimately benefit the MOIS. The attack has intensified discussions about longstanding concerns over Israel’s penetration of Iran. If the regime accepts the ministry’s claimed successes, such concerns seem likely to lead to increased funding and support for the MOIS. Additionally, as Tehran faces ongoing threats of assassinations, attacks on its WMD programs, and domestic discontent, MOIS surveillance and security capabilities are increasingly crucial to the regime’s security. Still, how has Khatib hung on to his job, especially when a new presidential administration has been inaugurated?
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Despite having portrayed himself during the election campaign as a pragmatic reformer, Pezeshkian may have had little choice in retaining an intelligence minister who has been sanctioned by the United States for his ministry’s human rights abuses. Iranian law requires the leader’s endorsement for the intelligence minister’s appointment. Mohammad Khatami, the reform-minded cleric elected president in 1997, allegedly had fifteen candidates rejected by Khamenei before finding an acceptable nominee for intelligence minister. Moreover, Pezeshkian has publicly committed to pursuing Khamenei’s overall policies, which would seem to bode well for Khatib and his relationship with the president.
Some history about Khatib sheds further light on his ability to retain his position. The minister appears to be something of a regime favorite, having studied Islamic jurisprudence under Khamenei, maintained links to the IRGC, and held an important post in the judiciary. He joined the MOIS in 1991 after first serving in the IRGC intelligence branch through the 1980s. An early MOIS assignment to Qom involved counterintelligence and security duties that included monitoring the holy city’s many seminaries—potential sites of opposition to Khamenei—which brought Khatib into regular contact with the Office of the Supreme Leader.
Khatib later made connections with important conservative figures in Iran’s judiciary, especially Raisi. The late president was another former student of Khamenei and had risen in the judiciary to become deputy and then chief justice. From 2012 to 2019 Khatib headed the judiciary’s Protection and Intelligence Center, where he worked under Raisi. Khatib’s tenure also overlapped the judiciary assignments of his former MOIS boss, Gholam-Hoseyn Mohseni-Ejei, who had been Iran’s intelligence minister from 2005 to 2009. Between 2014 and 2021, Mohseni-Ejei was an assistant to the chief justice and then deputy chief justice to Raisi. Following Raisi’s election as president in 2021, Khamenei made the former MOIS head Iran’s new chief justice. Mohseni-Ejei reportedly became a close friend to Raisi during the period he served alongside the future president, who purportedly was being groomed by Khamenei as the next Supreme Leader.
With Raisi’s inauguration as president in August 2021, these three men created an unprecedentedly close linkage between the presidency, judiciary, and intelligence ministry. This alignment was ripe to give the MOIS an even larger role in and more latitude for enforcing Iran’s vague national security laws against Iranian dissidents of all stripes. Upon being nominated minister, Khatib promised a transformation program focused on providing improved surveillance and protection for national security. From the start, the Raisi administration appeared to restore some of the ministry’s institutional influence. In an address to MOIS officers in March 2022, Raisi called for the ministry’s transformation to preserve and protect the system and the Islamic Revolution. Following the attempts by his predecessor, President Hassan Rouhani, to reduce some the ministry’s more egregious repressive policies and procedures, Raisi’s call seemed designed to revive hardliner trust in the MOIS. Raisi also emphasized the need for cooperation among Iran’s intelligence agencies, possibly indicating a desire for the MOIS to take the lead in achieving this.
The emphasis on improving the performance of Iran’s intelligence community was necessary because repeated domestic failures in counterintelligence and protection missions had shown how exposed Iran had become to foreign intelligence operations, particularly sophisticated Israeli ones. For more than a decade, Iran suffered repeated high-profile assassinations of Iranian nuclear scientists and other officials attributed to Israeli operatives. In late 2020, Israel took the attacks up a notch and assassinated Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, the reputed father of Iran’s nuclear program. Although regime leaders credited the MOIS with warning of and nearly preventing the attack, Fakhrizadeh’s death represented a major intelligence and security failure. Months later, an explosion at the Natanz nuclear facility in April 2021 led to official criticism of Iran’s intelligence community for not stopping “the Israel within,” the perceived Mossad infiltration of Iranian intelligence and security services.
These Israeli successes highlighted shortcomings in MOIS capabilities, including its inability to coordinate fully with other Iranian intelligence organizations. Still, the ministry has claimed the disruption of numerous Israeli and other foreign intelligence operations and the capture of various spies, terrorists, and insurgents that have maintained its standing. MOIS investigations following attacks also have often led to the arrest of foreign intelligence assets, furthering strengthening its reputation as a trusted regime organ.
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Under Khatib’s leadership, the ministry has strengthened working relations with the judiciary. Together, judiciary and MOIS officers have operated using an expansive definition of internal threats. In addition to dissidents and separatists, the MOIS targets independent journalists, human rights advocates, labor unions, and even environmentalists. Arrests, trials, and executions have skyrocketed over the past three years.
Back in mid-2022, the ministry contributed to lighting the fuse for future unrest when it allowed Mohseni-Ejei to enlist its services in protecting religious and cultural values. After accusing Iran’s enemies of promoting immorality in society, the chief justice called on the country’s intelligence bodies to take action against groups campaigning against the mandatory wearing of the hijab for women. Soon thereafter, 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died in custody after being detained on the nebulous charge of “improper hijab.” Her death sparked a months-long series of massive anti-government protests as Iranians across the country proclaimed their frustrations with a range of social, economic, and political grievances under the slogan “woman, life, freedom.”
From the outset of these demonstrations, Khatib threatened protesting Iranians with prosecution. Throughout late 2022, the MOIS did its share of suppressing the demonstrations, identifying and arresting individuals, placing activists under house arrest, intimidating the media, and disrupting protests. Since then, the MOIS has joined the regime’s other security forces in targeting civil and religious activists from various ethnic groups, obtaining forced confessions from political prisoners, and supporting the prosecution, imprisonment, and, in some cases, executions of these dissidents for the security-related charges of baghy (armed rebellion), moharebeh (enmity against god) and efsad-fil-arz (corruption on earth).
Khatib’s connections to Khamenei and Mohseni-Ejei suggest that he is well-positioned to strengthen his ministry’s standing further within the regime. Having lost his protégé Raisi, the aging Khamenei might want a stronger MOIS to counterbalance the increasingly powerful IRGC. A robust intelligence ministry also could help stifle differences among the conservatives and monitor potential challenges from within the establishment against the leader’s efforts to cement his legacy.
In short, under Khatib’s leadership, the MOIS is poised to play an increasingly prominent role within the regime, particularly as Iran faces ongoing challenges at home and abroad. As it has in the past, however, the ministry’s expanding focused on domestic threats may come at the expense of addressing genuine foreign intelligence threats, potentially leaving the regime just as vulnerable as it is now.
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