Ali Larijani appointed secretary of Iran's top security body

Adviser to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei recently held talks in Moscow

His new job is the latest of several influential positions Ali Larijani has held in the Iranian government. Reuters

Iran has appointed Ali Larijani, a top adviser to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, as secretary of its Supreme National Security Council.

The appointment by Iran's President Masoud Pezeshkian was reported by the semi-official Tasnim news agency on Tuesday. Ali Akbar Ahmadian previously held the position.

The son of a prominent cleric, Mr Larijani has held several influential positions in government. He served as speaker of parliament from 2008 to 2020. He was also a national security adviser and before that the head of Iran's state broadcaster.

He and his four brothers are part of a powerful conservative family with ties to other prominent members of the political class. Mr Larijani’s father-in-law was the late Morteza Motahhari, a well-known cleric and a central figure in the 1979 revolution.

Last month, Mr Larijani made a surprise visit to Moscow, where he met the Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss Tehran's nuclear programme. Mr Larijani "conveyed assessments of the escalating situation in the Middle East and around the Iranian nuclear programme", the Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said of the meeting at the time.

Mr Putin had expressed Russia's "well-known positions on how to stabilise the situation in the region and on the political settlement of the Iranian nuclear programme", he added. Moscow has a cordial relationship with Iran's leadership and provides crucial backing for Tehran but did not swing forcefully behind its partner even after the US joined Israel's massive bombing campaign against Iran in June.

Iran has consistently denied seeking a nuclear weapon, while defending its "legitimate rights" to the peaceful use of atomic energy. Mr Larijani also visited China as the sitting speaker in 2019, in the company of Mohammad Javad Zarif, who at that time was the country's foreign minister. Even after leaving office, he continued to help steer Tehran’s relations with Beijing.