Qasem-Ali Zahir Nejad (Persian: قاسمعلی ظهیرنژاد; 1924 – 13 October 1999)[1] was an Iranian military officer and military figure in the Iran–Iraq War.
Zahirnejad began studies in the Imam Ali Military University in 1951. He retired from the army in 1976 as a colonel. After the Iranian Revolution, he returned to the army at the beginning of the unrest in Kurdistan and he became the commander of 64th Infantry Division in the same year. In 1980, he was promoted to brigadier general to command the Iranian Gendarmerie and Army. On 9 October 1981, he was promoted to the position of President of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
During the Iran–Iraq War, his insistent implementation of regular military commanders and conventional tactics led to clashes with the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), a branch of the Iranian Armed Forces that relies on the use of mostly light infantry together with some armored equipment as well as unorthodox military tactics. He achieved the rank of major general on 6 November 1989. He died of a stroke on 13 October 1999.
