Iranian president, foreign minister killed in helicopter crash

Dubai: Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, his foreign minister and others have been found dead at the site of a helicopter crash after an hours-long search through a foggy, mountainous region of the country’s north-west on Monday, state media reported.

The crash comes as the Middle East remains unsettled by the Israel-Hamas war, during which Raisi, 63, under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, launched an unprecedented drone-and-missile attack on Israel last month. It followed an earlier Israeli attack on an Iranian consulate in Damascus.

A screen grab captured from a video shows the wreck of the helicopter that had carried Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and his delegation.Credit: Iranian Red Crescent Society/Handout

Under Raisi, Iran enriched uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels, further escalating tensions with the West as Tehran also supplied bomb-carrying drones to Russia for its war in Ukraine and armed militia groups across the region.

Meanwhile, Iran has faced years of mass protests against its Shiite theocracy over its ailing economy and women’s rights – making the moment that much more sensitive for Tehran and the future of the country.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.Credit: Office of the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran via Getty Images

State TV gave no immediate cause for the crash in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province. Among the dead was Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, 60.

The helicopter also carried the governor of Iran’s East Azerbaijan province and other officials and bodyguards, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.

Raisi had been on the border with Azerbaijan on Sunday to inaugurate a dam with its President Ilham Aliyev.

The visit came despite chilly relations between the two nations, including over a gun attack on Azerbaijan’s embassy in Tehran in 2023, and Azerbaijan’s diplomatic relations with Israel, which Iran views as its main enemy in the region.

Earlier on Monday, Turkish authorities released what they described as drone footage showing what appeared to be a fire in the wilderness that they suspected to be wreckage of a helicopter.

The co-ordinates in the footage put the fire some 20 kilometres south of the Azerbaijan-Iranian border on the side of a steep mountain.

Footage released by the IRNA showed what the agency described as the crash site, across a steep valley in a green mountain range. Soldiers speaking in the local Azeri language said: “There it is; we found it.”

Khamenei himself had urged the public to pray on Sunday night.

“We hope that God the Almighty returns the dear president and his colleagues in full health to the arms of the nation,” Khamenei said, drawing an “amen” from the worshippers he was addressing.

However, the supreme leader also stressed the business of Iran’s government would continue no matter what. He announced later on Monday that First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber was in charge of the executive branch of government after an extraordinary meeting.

What happens if an Iranian president dies in office?

According to article 131 of the Islamic Republic’s constitution, if a president dies in office, the first vice president takes over after confirmation from the supreme leader, who has the final say in all matters of state.

A council consisting of the first vice president, the speaker of parliament and the head of the judiciary must arrange an election for a new president within 50 days.

Raisi was elected president in 2021 and, under the current timetable, presidential elections are due to take place in 2025.

Under the Iranian constitution, Iran’s vice first president takes over, with Khamenei’s assent, if the president dies. A new presidential election must be held within 50 days.

The only other person who had been suggested was Mojtaba Khameini, the 55-year-old son to the supreme leader. However, some raised concerns over the position being taken, only for the third time since 1979, by a family member, particularly after the Islamic Revolution overthrew the hereditary Pahlavi monarchy of the shah.

Raisi, 63, a hardliner who formerly led the country’s judiciary, was viewed as a protégé of Khamenei and some analysts had suggested he could replace the 85-year-old leader after Khamenei’s death or resignation.

Raisi won Iran’s 2021 presidential election, a vote that had the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history. Raisi is sanctioned by the US in part over his involvement in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 at the end of the bloody Iran-Iraq war.

Under Raisi, Iran now enriches uranium at nearly weapons-grade levels and hampers international inspections. Iran has armed Russia in its war on Ukraine, as well as launched a massive drone-and-missile attack on Israel amid its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. It also has continued arming proxy groups in the Middle East, such as Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Meanwhile, mass protests in the country have raged for years. The most recent involved the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, a woman who had been detained for allegedly not wearing a hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of authorities. The months-long security crackdown that followed the demonstrations killed more than 500 people and led to the detention of more than 22,000.

In March, a United Nations investigative panel found that Iran was responsible for the “physical violence” that led to Amini’s death.

Raisi is the second Iranian president to die in office. In 1981, a bomb blast killed president Mohammad Ali Rajai in the chaotic days after the revolution.

AP

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