Credit : BRICS NEWS
Iran’s Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Mojtaba Khamenei, has met the country’s most senior military commanders and issued them what his office described as “important and strategic” orders, which it said would be made public shortly.
The news aggregator BRICS News reported on X on the evening of October 31, 2026, Malaysia time, that Khamenei would soon release major strategic orders given to top military commanders. The announcement itself came from the Supreme Leader’s official website and account, according to Al Jazeera, which reported on Saturday that the leader “met the senior commanders of the country’s armed forces and issued them strategic directives”.
Orders yet to be published
According to Al Jazeera, the Supreme Leader’s account said the “important and strategic orders issued by the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces during his meeting with senior military commanders” would be published within minutes. China’s CGTN carried a similar breaking report at 5:48pm Beijing time, citing Iranian reports. Iran’s state news agency IRNA later ran a report headlined “Leader issues new directives to Armed Forces to confront enemies”. At the time of writing, LNA had not been able to read the full text of the orders, and neither the date nor the place of the meeting had been disclosed.
Khamenei has not been seen in public since taking office, The Telegraph reported on October 31, and he has governed through intermediaries and written directives for his own protection. He was selected as the Islamic Republic’s third Supreme Leader in March 2026 after his father, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and numerous senior officials and commanders were killed during the conflict with the United States and Israel.
A leader asserting control
In recent weeks Khamenei has received a series of top officials at undisclosed locations, including President Masoud Pezeshkian, judiciary chief Gholam Hossein Mohseni-Ejei, parliament speaker Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf and Supreme National Security Council secretary Mohsen Rezaei, The Telegraph reported. An Iranian official told the newspaper that the meetings were meant to ensure “the country is run the way he wants” after a period in which there had not been a single voice speaking for Iran.
The new orders follow decrees published by his office on August 10, 2026, in which he appointed six senior commanders to key posts in the armed forces, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and the Basij, according to The National. In those decrees he named Major General Ali Abdollahi as chief of staff of the armed forces and Major General Ahmad Vahidi as commander-in-chief of the IRGC, and he instructed Vahidi to prepare the force for what he called “powerful offensive operations against the enemy”.
Warnings of a “shocking” response
The meeting came on the same day that a senior Iranian security and political official told Lebanon’s Al Mayadeen television that the armed forces had finalised a comprehensive operational plan to respond to any military aggression, the Tasnim news agency reported. “The scale and intensity of Iran’s forthcoming response will be beyond their imagination and will certainly be shocking,” the unnamed official said.
Diplomatic efforts are also under way. Iran International, citing Axios, reported that Qatari mediators held talks in Tehran for at least 12 hours on Friday while keeping in contact with the White House, amid reports that Washington and Israel were preparing for possible military action. The outlet said Khamenei had recently called for an end to the war and the current uncertainty, while insisting that Iran’s conditions for an agreement be met.
LNA will update this story when the full text of the Supreme Leader’s orders is released.
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