The ‘Papillon’ of Iran: Shamkhani’s rise from the rubble amid US tensions

Ali Shamkhani, who taunted Israel after ⁠being pulled alive from the rubble of his Tehran home ⁠following a strike in June 2025, has survived at the centre of Iranian policymaking during ⁠its most testing military confrontations and diplomatic endeavours.

The 70-year-old former Revolutionary Guard commander is a trusted adviser to Supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in a high-stakes stand-off with the US that could determine whether the Islamic Republic, born from revolution in 1979, survives to half a century.

“B******s, I am alive,” Shamkhani told Iranian filmmaker Javad Mogouei in an interview published in October, referring to his narrow escape from the Israeli strike that destroyed his home and evoking the 1973 Hollywood prison escape film Papillon.

This year, Khamenei confirmed Shamkhani as secretary of Iran’s newly established Defence Council, created after last year’s 12-day war in which Israel ‌and the US launched military strikes on Iran’s nuclear facilities and military sites.

His appointment returns him to the core of Iran’s decision-making apparatus. The council is tasked with coordinating Iran’s wartime actions at a time when the US is threatening new air strikes from nearby warships if negotiations do not produce a new deal curtailing Tehran’s nuclear programme.

US President Donald Trump briefly laid out his case for a possible attack on Iran in his State of the Union speech to Congress on Tuesday, saying he would not allow the world’s biggest sponsor of terrorism to have a nuclear weapon.