Dan Lowe

Iran just put its MISSILE MAKER in charge of the Defence Ministry... When the war started back in Feb 2026, Iran's Defence Minister Aziz Nasirzadeh, a former air force commander, along with the IRGC chief and the armed forces chief of staff were all killed. For almost 8 months the seat stayed empty under an “acting” minister deploying the MOSAIC Doctrine. Today the Iranian parliament put another person in charge as the new Minister of Defence with a vote of 237 yes to 15. The man is Mehrdad Akhlaghi Ketabchi, a career engineer and a Defence Ministry figure with decades in Iran's MISSILE and aerospace industries and the former head of the Aerospace Industries Organization, the body the @USTreasury named as the overall manager of Iran's missile program. @UN sanctioned him back in 2007, then US sanctioned him in 2008, and with NO published war command. ...So what? The former Defence Minister was a pilot who came up through command. Akhlaghi spent his career BUILDING the missiles Iran has been firing since February. He knows that system from the inside, the factories, the suppliers, the dispersal sites, how a missile moves from the line to the launcher and how long it takes to replace one. As minister he now runs ALL of it, the missile lines and the drone lines, under a US naval blockade. But WHY him? Because Tehran's number one priority now is PRODUCTION and Advancement of the industry. His own program to parliament is to spread defence manufacturing across Iran's industrial network, push research, and restructure the ministry for the current threat. In plain English, build faster and build in more places, so no single night of strikes can take it out. And it is not only his plan. The same day, the Army Chief Major General Amir Hatami, himself a former defence minister, sent Akhlaghi what read like his own declared marching orders. Two wars and another round of sanctions, he said, have proven Iran's defence power now rests on domestic capability, innovation and self-reliance, and he expects rapid steps to raise combat readiness and deterrence. The Army, he added, now treats tighter synergy with the Defence Ministry as a strategic necessity and stands ready to build indigenous equipment alongside it. The whole military establishment is lining up behind one task, make more at home, faster, and stop depending on anything from outside. Akhlaghi also sent a message to Washington. He said "Trump should be thinking about getting his people out of the region safely," and that if Trump drops one bomb "he should see how many of his people he will have to carry out horizontally." He picked that line on purpose. The Pentagon's own count stands at 21 dead and 865 wounded going into the midterms, and he knows which number the @WhiteHouse can NOT afford to see grow. SO, is he more dangerous than the last one? For the people planning the next strike, YES. Killing a commander leaves a gap someone else fills. A missile builder who spreads production across the country leaves far fewer single targets to hit. Both sides now play the same game, Washington and Israel go after the head, Tehran spreads the body. Even Pezeshkian of Iran told parliament he hoped his nominee would "remain alive." He knows what that job title means on the other side's target list. The first real test is whether Iran puts new production or new systems on show in the next 4 to 6 weeks. The IRGC said in September more was coming, and I will be tracking every piece of it this winter. 𝗦𝗜𝗚𝗡𝗔𝗟, 𝗡𝗢𝗧 𝗡𝗢𝗜𝗦𝗘!!