Approved 237–15 in a wartime online session, the 68-year-old former missile-programme chief takes charge of rebuilding Iran's battered military-industrial base — and warns Washington its forces would leave the region “in a horizontal position” if it strikes again.
Published 18 October 2026 · 15:08 GMT
Iran's parliament approved Mehrdad Akhlaqi Ketabchi as Minister of Defence and Armed Forces Logistics on Sunday, October 18, 2026, ending eight months of interim leadership at the ministry. Lawmakers voted 237 in favour and 15 against, out of 277 votes cast, with no abstentions, according to figures carried by Press TV.
The vote took place in an online session. Parliament has convened remotely since the start of the US-Israel war on Iran on February 28, which killed then defence minister Aziz Nasirzadeh alongside other senior figures, Al Jazeera reported. President Masoud Pezeshkian had nominated Akhlaqi on October 5; two parliamentary committees examined his programme before the vote, and the session was chaired by Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, Press TV reported.
The appointment places a 68-year-old career defence-industry technocrat in charge of rebuilding and expanding a military-industrial infrastructure that has been heavily targeted by the United States and Israel, Al Jazeera reported.
Akhlaqi — rendered “Akhlaghi” by Iranian and Qatari outlets, a transliteration variance of the Persian name — has spent more than 42 years in Iran's Defence Ministry and its affiliated organisations, the presidency told parliament. He has headed three of the most consequential institutions in the country's weapons complex: the Shahid Bagheri Industrial Group, the Aerospace Industries Organization, and the Defence Industries Organization, according to Al Jazeera. His expertise is ballistic missiles, solid-fuel propulsion and military-industrial production, state media reported.
He is credited with a role in expanding the Sejjil and Zolfaghar families of Iranian ballistic missiles and precision-guided weapons such as the Almas missile and the Yasin guided bomb, Al Jazeera reported. Defence Ministry spokesman Brigadier General Reza Talaei-Nik told reporters this month that Akhlaqi's nomination reflected Iran's need to increase the quantity and quality of strategic weapons, particularly missiles and drones.
His record has drawn international scrutiny. He is subject to sanctions by the United States and the European Union over his work in Iran's defence sector, Reuters reported, and by the United Nations, Al Jazeera reported — measures the UN imposed in 2007 over alleged ballistic-missile and nuclear-related activities, according to Times Now.
In the programme he presented to lawmakers, Akhlaqi pledged to rebuild the country's military-industrial infrastructure, accelerate the development of defence technologies and expand cooperation with private-sector companies, Reuters reported. Before the vote he also met senior military commanders — including the commander-in-chief of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, Brigadier General Ahmad Vahidi — to map their requirements during and after the war, Al Jazeera reported.
His first public remarks as minister were combative. “If the American enemy makes another miscalculation, the response of the valiant Iranian people and the fighters of Islam will be surprising and extensive,” he told parliament, adding that Tehran had taken measures against the potential use by the US of its “mother of all bombs” against Iran. “The US President should focus on ensuring his forces are withdrawn safely from our region. If he drops a single bomb, he will have to see how many of his troops end up being carried out of the region in a horizontal position,” Reuters reported him saying; AFP separately quoted him warning of “enormous damage” to the US and the region if Washington resumed its campaign.
The mechanics of the interim period are only partly public. Reuters reported that Majid Ebn al-Reza took over in an interim capacity after Nasirzadeh's death; Press TV identified him as Brigadier General Seyyed Majid Ibn al-Reza, appointed acting minister by Pezeshkian; Al Jazeera reported he will now become Akhlaqi's deputy. No official statement has detailed how responsibilities will be divided between the two men.
Akhlaqi's central pledge — expanding private-sector cooperation — has no published implementation plan: no timelines, no named partners, no budget figures. Whether the defence-industrial base can absorb new private capacity at wartime speed is an open question, not an established fact.
The “mother of all bombs” threat remains second-hand. CNN reported this week that the US has developed strike plans that could include using the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb against Iranian energy infrastructure and nuclear sites if President Donald Trump orders renewed combat operations, as relayed by Reuters. The US administration has not publicly confirmed such plans.
Because in Iran, the defence minister is not primarily a field commander — he runs the Ministry of Defence and Armed Forces Logistics, the ministry that builds and buys the weapons. Appointing a missile-programme industrialist rather than a uniformed general tells you what Tehran thinks the bottleneck is: not command, but production. After eight months of a war that has heavily targeted its military-industrial infrastructure, Iran's leadership has put a production engineer in charge of the factory floor.
The timing sharpens the signal. The appointment arrives as reported US strike plans may include the GBU-43/B “mother of all bombs”, and as Tehran and Washington contest the control of the Strait of Hormuz. A defence ministry led by the man behind the Sejjil and Zolfaghar programmes is a ministry oriented toward one output above all: more missiles, faster, and harder to interdict.
There is a diplomatic dimension too. A technocrat under UN, US and EU sanctions is not an appointment designed to court the negotiating table — it is designed for a sanctions-proof procurement system. Iran is signalling that it intends to fight and rebuild under sanctions indefinitely, not that it is grooming a minister for a diplomatic reset. The live war coverage and the Pentagon's parallel preparations suggest both sides read the escalation the same way.
Three signals are legible. First, production over command: Iran's most acute wartime shortage is not generals but weapons, and the new minister's entire career is weapons. The Sejjil and Zolfaghar lineages matter here — these are the solid-fuel and precision systems that let Iran strike at range without air superiority. Putting their industrial godfather in charge is a bet on volume and quality of strategic weapons, exactly as the ministry's spokesman framed it this month.
Second, sanctions-proofing as doctrine. Akhlaqi has lived under international sanctions for nearly two decades; his ministry will now be run by someone who never expected access to Western supply chains. The pledge to draw in private-sector companies suggests an attempt to widen the domestic industrial base rather than to reopen foreign procurement — a war-economy posture, not a diplomacy posture.
Third, rhetorical escalation as deterrence. The “horizontal position” imagery and the “enormous damage” warning are calibrated for Washington's decision cycle, arriving precisely as reported US strike planning — including the GBU-43/B — dominates the threat environment. Tehran is telling the White House that the price of a second round is measured in American casualties and regional blowback. Whether the threat is credible depends on the production programme Akhlaqi now inherits: deterrence rhetoric without missiles is noise.
Watch the Strait of Hormuz first: a production-focused defence ministry and a contested waterway are a combustible combination, and energy markets have priced every phase of this war. Watch Russia and China second: a sanctions-hardened procurement chief may deepen Tehran's reliance on non-Western military-industrial partnerships, and the UN sanctions already on Akhlaqi's file give Beijing and Moscow a formal reason to keep distance — or a reason to ignore the file entirely. Watch Iran's parliament third: a wartime legislature voting remotely has just demonstrated it still functions as a confirmation body, which matters for the legitimacy of everything that follows.
Akhlaqi assumes the ministry immediately; the first observable milestones will be production announcements — missile tests, air-defence deployments, procurement contracts — rather than speeches. Parliament's national security and foreign policy commission, which vetted his programme, will be his first oversight audience. On the American side, the question is whether the reported strike plans advance or recede: the Pentagon's preparations and the GBU-43/B reporting are the two American signals to track against Tehran's new industrial push. The war's next phase will be written in factory output as much as in battle damage.
The Western lens: an industrialist takes the procurement helm Western coverage, led by the Reuters wire out of Dubai, frames the appointment as a technocratic turn: an aerospace-industry veteran placed in charge of the defence production and procurement apparatus. The sanctions angle dominates — US and EU measures are foregrounded as the defining fact of the new minister's international standing — and his combative first remarks are read as deterrence theatre aimed at Washington. Israel's Israel Defense adds a sharper edge: a “civilian-industrial figure rather than a military commander,” sanctioned since 2007, put in charge of an establishment that has “suffered heavy blows at the beginning of the conflict.”
The Eastern lens: searched, not found No independent reporting on the parliamentary vote was found in the Eastern information environment at the time of writing. Keyword searches across Xinhua, CGTN, NHK, Kyodo and CNA (English) — three separate passes, plus a scan of CNA's daily digest — returned no coverage of the October 18 confirmation. The Eastern perspective on this story is therefore honestly absent, not reconstructed.
The Global South lens: the vote mechanics, from the region Reporting from the region carries the details the wires compress. Al Jazeera's Tehran correspondent supplied the full mechanics — 237 for, 15 against, a remote parliament, Ebn al-Reza demoted to deputy — and the career depth: 42 years, the three industrial groups, the missile families. Press TV, as the primary state-media chain, is the origin of the nomination timeline: Pezeshkian's October 5 proposal, the committee reviews, Qalibaf's chairmanship.
Mehrdad Akhlaqi Ketabchi, 68, is Iran's new Minister of Defence and Armed Forces Logistics, confirmed by parliament on October 18, 2026. He is a career defence-industry technocrat with more than 42 years in the ministry and its affiliated bodies, having led the Shahid Bagheri Industrial Group, the Aerospace Industries Organization and the Defence Industries Organization. His expertise centres on ballistic missiles, including the Sejjil and Zolfaghar families.
Iran's parliament, which has convened online since the war began on February 28, voted 237 in favour and 15 against out of 277 votes cast, with no abstentions. President Masoud Pezeshkian nominated him on October 5; the national security and foreign policy committee and the industry and mining committee reviewed his programme, and the vote was chaired by Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf.
Akhlaqi is sanctioned by the United States and the European Union over his defence-sector work, according to Reuters. Al Jazeera reports he is also under United Nations sanctions, and Times Now reports the UN imposed them in 2007 over alleged ballistic-missile and nuclear-related activities. His leadership of the Shahid Bagheri group and the aerospace and defence-industries organisations is the stated basis of the measures.
The defence minister runs the ministry that builds and buys weapons, so choosing a missile-programme industrialist signals that Tehran sees production — not command — as its wartime bottleneck. His pledge is to rebuild military-industrial infrastructure, accelerate defence technology and bring in private-sector companies. His combative first remarks, warning of “enormous damage” if Washington strikes again, are calibrated deterrence aimed at US decision-makers.
Akhlaqi told parliament Tehran had prepared countermeasures against the potential US use of the GBU-43/B Massive Ordnance Air Blast Bomb against Iran. CNN reported this week that US strike plans could include the weapon against Iranian energy infrastructure and nuclear sites if President Trump orders renewed combat. Akhlaqi warned that if the US “drops a single bomb,” its troops would be carried out of the region “in a horizontal position.”
