At the Dec. 11 ceremony to introduce Gholamhossein Gheybparvar as the new head of Iran’s paramilitary Basij, Gen. Mohammad Shirazi, the head of military affairs at the office of the supreme leader, recounted that Ayatollah Ali Khamenei realized that a number of “ill-tempered” individuals were angry with Gheybparvar when he visited the southern city of Shiraz. In Shirazi’s telling, rather than being upset, Khamenei saw this as showing Gheybparvar’s “perseverance and [being on the] correct path.” While this story at first glance seems inconsequential, the supreme leader has presented it in Iranian media as a ringing endorsement.

According to biographies circulated in Iranian media, Brig. Gen. Gheybparvar was born in Shiraz. He was expelled from school for writing anti-shah slogans before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. After the revolution, he joined the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) and fought in the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War. He received his doctorate in Strategic Studies at Revolutionary Guard-affiliated Imam Hussein University. In 2000, he was put in charge of training the Revolutionary Guards’ ground forces. In October 2015, after the death of Brig. Gen. Hossein Hamedani in Syria, Gheybparvar was appointed as the head of Imam Hussein Headquarters, which is tasked with organizing IRGC brigades. In this role, he traveled to Syria to “prepare the people-based divisions and brigades.”

Gheybparvar’s most significant role, however — in the eyes of his superiors — was as IRGC commander for his home province of Fars. This position, which he held for years, can shed light on how his leadership may influence the Basij’s future. Of note, the Basij is formally under the authority of the IRGC and was incorporated into the latter’s ground forces in 2008.

When Khamenei appointed Brig. Gen. Mohammad Reza Naghdi to head the Basij in October 2009, the country had for months been rocked by massive protests in the aftermath of a disputed presidential election. Khamenei, who viewed the protests as a foreign conspiracy to topple the Islamic Republic, needed a commander to maintain the Basij as an ideological bulwark against Western and especially American influence. With his background in media and cultural affairs as well as a penchant for dramatic statements — once claiming that Europeans would become extinct like dinosaurs due to homosexuality and living with animals — Naghdi was ideologically and temperamentally well-suited to head the Basij through this era.