📰 MIDDLE EAST CRISIS BRIEFING — 09:30 CET
4 sources | Day 26 — morning
📌 THREAD: Iran command chain — new SNSC chief
Status: NEW
07:00 CET Al Jazeera — Mohammad Bagher Zolghadr appointed head of the Supreme National Security Council (SNSC), successor to Ali Larijani who was killed in an airstrike last week. link
Delta: First formal institutional appointment in the post-Larijani security chain. Zolghadr is a former IRGC commander, former IRGC deputy commander-in-chief (8 years), and has been secretary of the Expediency Council since 2023. His selection reflects the need for a pure security profile in wartime conditions — Iranian hardliners view him as better suited to the current war footing than his predecessor. The SNSC role is structurally linked to the office of the new Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei.
Context: Ghalibaf remains the de facto political ruler; Zolghadr controls security-intelligence coordination. Iran's command chain consolidates around two hardliner poles.
📌 THREAD: Military front — Lebanon, morning strikes
Status: EVOLVING
07:10 CET Guardian — Israeli strikes in the Sidon area (southern Lebanon): at least 6 killed (in a town and a Palestinian refugee camp) + 3 more in another locality. link
Delta: First confirmed casualties of the morning of March 25 in the Lebanese theater, in the area of the announced Israeli "buffer" zone. Sidon is north of the planned buffer zone (Litani River) — a signal that strikes are not limited to the planned occupation strip.
📌 THREAD: Iran internal front — ethnic destabilization
Status: NEW
07:01 CET Al Jazeera — US/Israeli strikes concentrate with high intensity on East Azerbaijan, a border province in northwest Iran. Iranian authorities have made arrests linked to alleged internal destabilization operations in the struck areas.
Delta: First explicit reference to a possible ethnic destabilization strategy in peripheral provinces (predominantly Azerbaijani population). If confirmed as a pattern, this would add a latent civil war dimension to external pressures — a red line for Tehran.
No strategic change in the 07:00–07:30 UTC cycle. US 15-point plan: Iran maintains explicit rejection (Zolfaghari 07:00 CET, already reported). Casualty figures and diplomatic front unchanged from previous batch.