India, March 16 -- He has lost every presidential election he has fought, though he was runner-up in 2021. Yet he has perennially been a senior figure within the Iranian system. Mohsen Rezaei, 71, has been picked by Iran's new Supreme Leader, Mojtaba Khamenei, as his senior military adviser amid the ongoing conflict with US and Israel, Iran's state news agency Mehr reported on Monday.

A former chief of the elite force Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), Rezaei is seen as a particularly hardline leader in an already conservative regime.

This syncs with Mojtaba Khamenei's leanings that, analysts say, are more right wing than those of his father and predecessor Ali Khamenei, who was killed when US-Israeli strikes began on Tehran on F...