“There it is, we found it.” Soldiers speaking Azeri said it on video released by Iran’s state news agency IRNA, which showed a steep hillside in the northwest of the country where a helicopter carrying President Ebrahim Raisi had come down in dense fog.
Raisi, 63, was found dead on Monday morning, hours after the crash, state media reported. So was Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, 60. The BBC counted eight dead in all: the president and seven members of his entourage.
Three helicopters, one lost
The aircraft was an Iranian Air Force Bell 212. It was flying in a convoy of three helicopters from the Giz Galasi Dam to Tabriz when it crashed near the village of Uzi in East Azerbaijan province on 19 May 2024. Also killed were the province’s governor-general, Malek Rahmati, and Mohammad Ali Ale-Hashem, the supreme leader’s representative in East Azerbaijan. The head of the president’s security team and three flight crew died too.
State television gave no immediate cause. The Iranian Red Crescent said the bodies of all the victims had been recovered.
Turkish authorities had released drone footage early Monday showing a heat signature in wilderness that they “suspected to be wreckage of helicopter.” The coordinates put the fire about 12 miles south of the Azerbaijan-Iranian border, on the side of a steep, forested mountain.
An ageing fleet
Iran flies a variety of helicopters, but international sanctions make parts hard to come by for many of them. The military air fleet largely dates to before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Succession
Within hours, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 85, who has ruled since 1989, sent condolences through state media. He announced five days of mourning and confirmed that Vice President Mohammad Mokhber would step in until elections. Under the constitution, which dates from the 1979 revolution, those must be held within 50 days. Only candidates approved by the ruling clerics can run, so a major change of course looks unlikely.
The cabinet met on Monday and pledged to follow Raisi’s path. It called the “hard-working president” “martyred” and promised the government would run “without the slightest disruption.”
Raisi was a hard-liner and had been seen as a protege of Khamenei. Some analysts believed he could one day replace the ageing supreme leader. The only other name floated as a possible successor is Mojtaba Khamenei, the leader’s 55-year-old son, though some have raised concerns about the post passing within a family for only the third time since the revolution.
Raisi is the second Iranian president to die in office. A bomb blast killed Mohammad Ali Rajai in 1981, in the chaotic days after the revolution.
Sources
- Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi killed in helicopter crash
- Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi killed in helicopter crash along with foreign minister, state media confirm
- 2024 Varzaqan helicopter crash
