Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi was killed in a helicopter crash in a mountainous region of the country.
The semi-official Mehr News Agency reported that rescuers on Monday found the helicopter carrying the president and other officials, including Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdullahian, who also died. The plane crashed on Sunday near the village of Tafil in northwestern Iran.
Raisi was returning from an event on the border with Azerbaijan in a group of three helicopters when his helicopter went down with nine people on board, all of whom died. There was heavy fog in the area, making conditions difficult for rescue teams. The other two helicopters landed safely.
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said intelligence agencies told him there was no evidence of foul play in the helicopter crash, NBC reported.
The president's death comes at a time of unrest in the Middle East, with the war escalating in Gaza between Israel and Hamas. The conflict has brought Iran, which supports the Armed Islamic Group, and Israel closer to an all-out conflict and has led to other Tehran-backed groups, including the Houthis in Yemen and Shiite militias in Iraq, attacking ships around the Red Sea and the United States. rules.
In April, Iran launched an unprecedented barrage of missiles and drones at Israel, its arch-enemy, though almost all of them were intercepted and caused little damage. The Jewish state reaction A limited strike on an air base in Iran.
While tensions between the two countries have since eased, they remain high as the Israeli army enters the eighth month of its war to destroy Hamas – which the United States and European Union classify as a terrorist organization.
Raisi, an ultra-conservative cleric in his 60s who won the presidential election in 2021, was seen as the favorite to succeed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's supreme leader who is in his 80s.
He is likely to be succeeded by First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber, who has represented Iran on several recent foreign trips and who, like many senior Iranian officials, is subject to US sanctions. Elections are likely to be held within 50 days, according to the constitution.
Raisi's death “will not seriously disrupt Iran's internal stability, as security forces, the army and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps remain under the control” of the supreme leader, Gregory Bro, an analyst at Eurasia, said in a note. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard is a powerful military and commercial force and controls many of Iran's relationships with proxy militias.
Both Raisi and Amir Abdollahian supervised the restoration of Iranian diplomatic relations with the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through A Chinese-brokered deal In March 2023. But it was also a time when there was also an impasse in negotiations to revive the Iran nuclear deal with world powers including the United States and lift Western economic sanctions.
Iranian television earlier broadcast live footage of dozens of ambulances amid heavy rain and fog. The Turkish Ministry of Defense said it sent a drone in response to a request from Iran to help locate and monitor the accident site. The European Union helped by activating a rapid response mapping service.
Raisi met with his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev to open a jointly developed dam on the border between the two countries early Sunday.
Human rights groups accused the Iranian president of being instrumental in the mass execution of thousands of political opponents in the late 1980s. In 2018, London-based Amnesty International said he chaired a “death panel” and called on the United Nations to investigate him for crimes against humanity.