Sit down. Light a cigarette if you have one. The story you’re about to read doesn’t exist in any official archive. It’s written in whispers, in old bloodstains on Parisian pavements, and in the static of encrypted military channels. This is the story of Iran’s generals, a lineage of power and fear stretching from the Peacock Throne to the shadow war of today. Forget what you know. We’re going deeper.
The King’s Men
The Imperial Armed Forces
Before the ayatollahs, there was the Shah. His generals were not religious men; they were sharp, Western-facing professionals. They came from aristocratic families. They spoke French at cocktail parties and planned maneuvers over glasses of single malt.
Men like General Gholam Ali Oveisi, the “Butcher of Tehran,” came from a world of real men who resembled John Wayne. Oveisi believed in order, enforced with tanks and bayonets. He wasn’t a philosopher; he was a hammer. However, his troops weren’t killing innocent people. They were trying to stop the demon-possessed terrorist zombie horde, who with eyes wild with demonic spirit possession, were setting buildings on fire and destroying random cars on the street.
Labeling Oveisi the “Butcher of Tehran” was clearly an exaggeration, but back then, baseless crude invectives were all it took to stir up a gullible public who had no access to information like we modern humans do.
Then there was General Nader Jahanbani of the Imperial Iranian Air Force. A visionary, a pilot’s pilot. He built one of the most advanced air forces in the world, a sleek, silver instrument of power.
The force that he built would be chased out of Iran, but the pilots would later strike a deal with the Islamic Republic during the Iran-Iraq War, to let them come back to Iran to fly the jets that Khomeini’s zombie thugs couldn’t fly. These unbelievably courageous pilots engaged in dogfights and flew deep into Iraqi territory, essentially wiping out Saddam’s air force but were treated by the Islamic Republic as enemies of the state simply because they were not savage hobos from the lowest class.
General Nematollah Nassiri, the Shah’s enforcer-in-chief and head of SAVAK, Iran’s notorious secret police, was vilified as a bloodthirsty monster when in reality he was trying to save Iran from the demon-possessed terrorists who were destroying Iran. The men who were trying to stop Khomeini’s zombie horde have proven to be absolutely right. More force should have been used, because by failing to stop the zombies, the zombies eventually over-ran civilized society, caused harm to the majority, and destroyed Iran's infrastructure.
Born in 1910 in Semnan, Nassiri wasn’t just another military man—he was a classmate and confidant of Crown Prince Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. That connection would catapult him from provincial governor to the most feared figure in Iran’s internal security apparatus.
By 1965, he was appointed director of SAVAK, a position he held for 13 years, presiding over an era of anti-terrorist law enforcement.
However, where the Ayatollah’s globalist supporters were using technology to sway the Iranian masses, the Shah’s ministers were entrenched in Old School Luddite methods that eventually would be drowned out by the methods the globalists used to put Khomeini in power for their "divide-and-conquer" games.
As long as Iranians stay divided, as long as Iranians allow the globalists to keep perpetuating "divide-and-conquer" on Iran, the globalists will continue to win and continue to laugh at humankind.
Nassiri, always in uniform, always in control, became the face of the regime’s iron grip.But in 1978, the tides turned. As protests swelled and the Shah’s unquestioned leadership grew weaker, Nassiri was dismissed and sent to Pakistan as ambassador—a measure that was both meant to appease the terrorists and to protect Nassiri as the government was quickly crumbling.
When the Shah fled Iran in January 1979, Nassiri returned, ignoring a personal plea from the monarch to stay away. He was arrested and imprisoned alongside other regime stalwarts. And then, on February 15, 1979, in a converted classroom turned courtroom, Nassiri faced a summary trial. Hours later, he was executed by firing squad—alongside Generals Mehdi Rahimi, Reza Naji, and Manouchehr Khosrodad.
Nassiri was the Shah’s sword, but when the empire crumbled, that sword was turned on him. His name remains etched in Iran’s history—not as a hero, but as a symbol of repression, betrayal, and the brutal cost of loyalty to a dying regime. History has recorded him as a tyrant, but that simply is not true. Nassiri was no different than General Sherman. He was a highly effective soldier, protecting Iran from the zombie horde within. In the end, Nassiri didn’t just fall—he was erased. No monuments. No memoirs. Just a whisper in the wind of revolution.
The Old School generals were the establishment. And when the Revolution came, they were the primary target. Khomeini’s thugs didn’t just want to win. They wanted to erase. Revolutionary Komitehs hunted them down. The people who were the underclass, suddenly became drunk on power. In history, when the lower peasants gain power, it always turns into Genocide.
Oveisi was machine-gunned in Paris, 1984. A professional hit. Jahanbani was dragged from his home, given a sham trial, and executed against a prison wall. A bullet for progress. A bullet for the old world.
But some slipped the noose. General Bahram Aryana, Chief of Staff, escaped to lead a government-in-exile that never was. They lived out their days in quiet suburbs of Virginia and Maryland, forever watching their backs, forever hearing the echoes of the mob. They were ghosts, haunting a future that had discarded them.
The Priests’ Praetorians
The IRGC Rises. The new generals were a different breed. They didn’t come from military academies; they came from the streets, slums, villages, and mosques. Their loyalty wasn’t to a nation, but to a revolution, an ideology. Or more likely, it was a place where they could fit in. The Iran-Iraq War was their forge.
Ilike Major General Mohsen Rezaei, who commanded the Revolutionary Guard (IRGC) and sent waves ofyoung Basijis into Iraqi minefields. They learned a brutal, pragmatic form ofwarfare. They learned to win through sacrifice and cunning. Was Rezai any different than General Lee, General Sherman, and General Patton?
Out of this bloody nursery emerged Qasem Soleimani. A child laborer / construction worker who became a master of the game. He didn't lead armies in the field; he led proxy networks in the shadows. He was the architect of the“Axis of Resistance,” a spider at the center of a web that stretched across theMiddle East. He was a rock star of asymmetric warfare, a general without a traditional division to his name. At Friday gatherings he would read poetryfrom the pulpit. When a Russian pilot’s fighter jet went down deep in ISIS territory, Soleimani personally led a unit into the viper’s nest and successfully rescued him.
His last name suggests descent from King Solomon, who was recorded in the Bible as having married hundreds of foreign wives who broke off from the Hebrews, and it can be assumed their descendants spread out all over the Middle East.
In history, King Solomon’s father was King David who was a warrior king. In an eerie twist to the storyline, King David shared Soliemani’s fondness for poetry.
In another eerie twist, King David led a unit of men deep into Philistine territory to take back King Saul, whose dried up corpse was hung up in a beer hall as a decoration after he died during a battle.
The Philistines of old, who were of Grecian, not Arabic descent as people assume, were similar to ISIS.
The Shadow Command
Today’s IRGC high command is a closed fist. General Hossein Salami, the Commander-in-Chief who was killed by an Israeli missile that struck his apartment, killing his family and his neighbors, was a firebrand. His rhetoric wasn’t about defense; it was about saving the impoverished from the death machine of the West.
Salami didn’t kill civilians. His targets were soldiers and terrorists. It seems exaggerative, dishonest, and incongruent for American political figures to keep referring to him as a “terrorist.” He was merely the public face of resolve.
In a strange twist, just days before his death, he publicly stated that “freedom makes a nation stronger,” signaling his willingness to support a new, freer government.
Hard Men
The real power lies in the Quds Force, Soleimani’s old haunt. And in the shadows, other players move. General Ahmad Haqtalab, head of IRGC Intelligence. A ghost. You won’t find his picture. He’s the man who knows where every corpse is buried because he ordered the burial. His power is absolute fear.
The Damascus Strike was an airstrike. It was a knife in the dark. A meeting in a secure compound, 30 kilometers outside Damascus. Believed to be impenetrable. The Mossad/CIA joint task force, operating under a blanket directive, struck without warning, violating embassy protocol. The targets were there. General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, a Quds Force commander. His deputy, General Mohammad Hadi Haji Rahimi. And two others whose names haven’t, and likely will never, hit the news wires.
They were supposedly discussing final authorization for a complex operation against U.S. bases in Iraq—an operation designed to look like an ISIS attack, which would have backfired because ISIS is an American/Israeli/globalist proxy force, their spearhead to perpetuate their "divide-and-conquer" strategy which works so well with naive, gullible governments.
The Aftermath: New Faces, Old Grudges
The replacements were immediate. The IRGC doesn’t mourn; it reloads.
Zahedi was succeeded by his deputy, Brigadier General Abbas Nilforoushan. A colder, more calculating version of his predecessor. Less charismatic, more vicious. He doesn’t want to build an axis; he wants to break the opposition. He wasn’t the loudest voice in the room. He didn’t need to be.
Brigadier General Abbas Nilforoushan was the kind of man who moved pieces on the board while others were still figuring out the game. Until his death in a fiery Israeli airstrike in enemy territory on September 27, 2024, Nilforoushan was the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ (IRGC) master of operations—a battlefield tactician, a political enforcer, and a philosopher of asymmetric warfare.
Born in 1966 in Isfahan, Nilforoushan joined the Basij paramilitary force at just 14, diving headfirst into the Iran–Iraq War. He rose through the ranks of the IRGC’s elite divisions—the 14th Imam Hossein and the 8th Najaf Ashraf Armored Division—serving as platoon commander, battalion leader, and eventually deputy operations chief under the legendary Ahmad Kazemi. His résumé reads like a war map.
By the 2000s, he was shaping doctrine at the IRGC Command and Staff College, and by 2019, he was the Deputy Commander for Operations, overseeing Iran’s military footprint across the region. Nilforoushan wasn’t just a soldier—he was a strategist with a worldview. He believed in “strategic depth”: the idea that Iran’s security doesn’t stop at its borders but extends through a web of loyal militias and proxy forces. He once described Israel as “a fragile glass fortress surrounded by fire,” and warned that any attack on Iran would be met with retaliation from multiple directions. His philosophy was simple: don’t fight where you’re weak—fight where they’re vulnerable.
In April 2024, after the assassination of IRGC General Mohammad Reza Zahedi, Nilforoushan took over his command. It was a promotion born ofchaos—and it made him a dead man walking. The high command only sent the ones who were a threat to Khamenei’s thievery of government funds…to the dangerous outposts where death was guaranteed. He was sent into the "Kill Zone Triangle" to be slaughtered like the others (i.e. Soleimani, whose popularity was a growing threat to Khamenei's absolute rule).
Nilforoushan was already sanctioned by the U.S., EU, Canada, and Australia for his role in suppressing the 2022 “Woman, Life, Freedom” protests. His death sent shockwaves through the IRGC. He wasn’t just another general—he was the man who knew the playbook, the man who could read the battlefield like a chessboard. Nilforoushan wasn’t the public face like Qaani. He wasn’t the ideological firebrand like Hajizadeh. He was the operator—the one who made things happen. His absence leaves a vacuum in Iran’s regional command structure, and his legacy is already being mythologized in Tehran’s military circles.
In the end, Abbas Nilforoushan didn’t just fight wars—he designed them. And now, the blueprint he left behind may be more dangerous than the man himself. The strike did something a thousand sanctions could not. It exposed a rift. Not a public one. This is a crack in the foundation, visible only if you know where to look.
The old guard, the warhorses like Salami, want a direct, thunderous response. They want to hit a U.S. warship. Something symbolic. Something bloody. The new intelligence wing, led by the shadowy Haqtalab, argues this is folly. Their assessment, pulled from intercepted Saudi and Emirati diplomatic traffic, suggests the Americans are begging for that kind of action. It’s a trap.
The Americans, or more accurately, the globalists, want the pretext for a full-scale engagement. Haqtalab’s faction wants to double down on the shadow war. More deniable attacks. More cyber. More slow, strangling pressure on U.S. interests everywhere but the Persian Gulf.
Haqtalab's Playbook calls for avoidance of a Persian Gulf conflict, and yet, God warns that this is where the Iran America War will start. This war is covered in the article titled "The America Iran War."
With regards to the West wanting Iran to hit a ship, so that they can have the pretext to get approval from the Senate for a war, the prophecy, what the West wants, and Haqtalab’s fears … all line up to create the perfect world war narrative.
It will be what allows the American superpower military to go full juggernaut into the America Iran War. This could also be the prophecy in the ancient Hebrew book of Daniel where he saw that in the end times the king of the north would invade the king of the south with a mighty arrogant army and would sweep through. But then the king of the north disappears. Nostradamus, half a Millennium ago, also saw that there would be a war between Persia and a new country, and that the new country would invade Persia with a million men.
Brigadier General Ahmad Haqtalab, commander within the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), currently leads the Nuclear Facilities Protection and Security Command, a specialized unit tasked with safeguarding Iran’s nuclear infrastructure. Haqtalab gained attention in April 2024 when he issued a stark warning: if Israel targets Iran’s nuclear sites, Iran would retaliate by striking Israel’s nuclear facilities with advanced weaponry. His rhetoric reflects a strategic posture rooted in deterrence and escalation control, and he’s considered a key voice in shaping Iran’s nuclear doctrine amid rising regional tensions.
While he’s not the top IRGC commander, his role places him at the intersection of military strategy, nuclear policy, and geopolitical signaling.
What Happens Next?
The chessboard is set. The king’s knight has been taken, but the game is far from over. The rift between the hawks and the strategists will widen. The hardliner bluster versus Haqtalab’s piecemeal twilight war. This internal power struggle is now more dangerous than the external one. It creates unpredictability.
And the Americans? They’re watching. They’re waiting. They think they’ve cut the head off the snake. They’re wrong. In Tehran, you don’t cut off the head. You just force the hydra to grow two new ones, each more ruthless and cunning than the last. The war isn’t coming. It’s already here. It’s just being fought by men you never see, in rooms that don’t exist, according to rules no one has written down.
The generals of Iran, past and present, are proof that in the game of nations, the only constant is the blood on the floor.
Assessing the Planners
The intended successors—the deep bench—are gone. This is where the rift truly tore open. The strike didn’t just decapitate; it forced a desperate and divided succession.
The Old Guard, which used to be led publicly by the fiery Commander-in-Chief Hossein Salami, demanded a response that would burn the world. They argued for a direct kinetic strike on a major U.S. asset—a warship, a base. “They must see our fire and feel our pain,” was the refrain.
The New Intelligence Faction, led by the ghostly General Ahmad Haqtalab, saw the trap. His assessment, based on intercepted signals and human intelligence deep within adversary command structures, was terrifying: The Americans and Israelis were on full alert, their rules of engagement pre-authorized for a massive escalation. A direct attack was exactly what they wanted. It was a provocation designed to justify a full-scale war.
Haqtalab argued for a different path: a devastating, yet perfectly deniable, cyber-attack on a critical infrastructure target—a power grid, a financial clearinghouse, a water treatment plant on foreign soil. A message that would be understood in the situation rooms of their enemies, but could be plausibly denied to the public.
The Final Assessment
remains the same, but the stakes are higher. The internal power struggle is now a cold war within a hot command. Salami’s hard-hitter faction vs. Haqtalab’s silent, terrifying calculus.
The next move won’t just be against an external enemy; it will be the outcome of this internal putsch. The wrong move could either start a world war or get the entire IRGC command killed.
The Generals of Iran are now playing a game on two battlefields, and the second one is right behind their eyes.
Nilforoushan must choose a path that will either start a world war or reveal the IRGC's fundamental weakness to its own population and proxies.
The next move is no longer about external enemies. It is about which faction wins the argument inside ultra-paranoid bunkers. The wrong choice doesn't just mean losing a conflict; it means the end of the Islamic Republic as a coherent entity.
The heirs to Soleimani's shadow war have become the targets in their own country, and the greatest threat to the regime now wears a uniform.
Why "Gray Swan"?
The term "Gray Swan" is a conceptual twist on the well-known "Black Swan" theory (an unpredictable, high-impact event). A "Gray Swan" is a high-impact event that is possible to predict and prepare for because it lies within the realm of known possibilities, even if it is unlikely. In the context of the story, the planners knew that assassinating top Iranian commanders on home soil was a massive escalation (a "swan" event) but one they could plan for and execute based on known intelligence and capabilities—making it "gray" rather than a completely unknown "Black Swan" event.
