Rezaei Named Khamenei's Rep as Houthis Hit Mokha Port

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Mohsen Rezaei Named Supreme Leader's Man on Iran's Security Council as Houthis Renew Attacks on Saudi-Backed Mokha Port

The Pakistan Times — Islamabad, August 10, 2026

Iran's Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei has picked Mohsen Rezaei, a former IRGC commander from the Iran-Iraq war era, as his personal representative on the country's Supreme National Security Council, while President Pezeshkian separately named him the council's new secretary. Almost the same day, Yemen's Houthi movement launched a fresh wave of missile and drone strikes on the Saudi-backed port of Mokha on the Red Sea, extending an assault that's now spilled into a second straight night.

Rezaei takes over from Mohammad Baqer Zolghadr, who had only held the security council secretary post since March, after Ali Larijani was killed in the US-Israeli strikes earlier this year. Khamenei's office confirmed Zolghadr isn't being pushed out entirely, he's being shifted to serve as the Supreme Leader's political adviser instead, with an official decree thanking him for what it called round-the-clock effort in the role. Rezaei himself spent sixteen years running the IRGC, from 1981 to 1997, and analysts tracking Iran's internal politics describe him as a hardliner rather than a moderate voice, someone who has issued plenty of threats over the years and remains a frequent presence in pro-regime Iranian media.

Over in Yemen, the renewed strikes on Mokha came less than a day after an earlier barrage had already hit the same port. Yemeni government forces said their air defences knocked down several drones during Sunday evening's attack, while a couple of ballistic missiles landed harmlessly in the sea. Houthi military spokesman Yahya Saree said the operation targeted Saudi troop positions and weapons depots in the area, framing it as retaliation for what the group calls continued Saudi military reinforcement along Yemen's western coast and in Taiz province. Yemeni officials on the ground tell a somewhat different story, with the port director quoted as confirming that several missiles actually struck civilian sections of the facility rather than purely military targets.

This round of Houthi attacks isn't isolated either. The group separately claimed a drone strike on Saudi Aramco's Jazan refinery around the same time, sparking a fire that was brought under control without any reported injuries. Yemeni officials say the broader fighting has already killed dozens of government troops and civilians over the past week alone, including more than seventeen people in a separate attack on Marib province. What makes the timing notable is that this marks the first major assault on Saudi Arabia since the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement was signed with Pakistan and Turkey just days earlier, a pact meant to strengthen exactly the kind of collective deterrence now being tested.

Read More:Islamabad Expressway Service Road Reconstruction Begins

Sources: Al Jazeera, Reuters, The National, Fortune

© The Pakistan Times. All rights reserved.

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