Ebrahim Raisi Iranian president dead in helicopter crash
DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP)– Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and the country’s foreign minister were found dead Monday hours after their helicopter crashed in fog, leaving the Islamic Republic without two key leaders as extraordinary tensions grip the broader Middle East.
Ebrahim Raisi, the President of Iran known for his strict stance and suppression of opposition, has passed away at the age of 63. According to reports from Iranian state media on Monday, Raisi, who was considered a possible future replacement for the nation’s elderly supreme leader, tragically lost his life in a helicopter accident.
On Monday, official Iranian news outlets reported the tragic loss of Judiciary Chief Raisi, as well as Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and several other high-ranking government officials, who all perished in a helicopter crash.
State-controlled media did not immediately explain the helicopter crash that transported the group to a mountainous region near the border with conditions. The incident occurred after Raisi had attended a ceremony alongside Azerbaijan’s President, Ilham Aliyev, to inaugurate a dam.
Inclement weather obstructed rescuers from locating the crashed helicopter.
Raisi, the son of a clergyman from Mashhad, Iran’s second-largest city, went to a religious school at the age of 15 and joined demonstrations against the Shah of Iran, who was supported by Western powers and was overthrown in the revolution of 1979 that brought Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s power.
Before taking office in 2021, the staunch right-winger served as the chief of the judicial system. One year into his presidency, he launched a sweeping campaign to enforce strict female attire regulations. This initiative led to the detention of Mahsa Amini, a young Kurdish woman who failed to fully conceal her hair with her headscarf in compliance with the nation’s “hijab and modesty” legislation.
Amini’s tragic demise while in custody ignited widespread demonstrations across the country, resulting in hundreds of fatalities, as reported by human rights organizations, and posed a significant challenge to the Islamic government’s authority since its inception in the 1979 revolution.
Following the decrease in those demonstrations, the government has initiated a fresh campaign targeting the clothing regulations for women, a move criticized by the human rights organization Amnesty International as an assault on women.
Raisi gained notoriety for his involvement in the extrajudicial killings of 1988. This was not the only instance where Raisi faced allegations of brutally suppressing opposition. Organizations advocating for human rights have reported that when he was a young prosecutor in 1988, he sat on committees that were responsible for ordering the execution of political prisoners, earning him the moniker of being part of the “death committees.”
Raisi was a member of the Tehran panel that, according to human rights groups, issued orders to execute numerous individuals deemed enemies of the Islamic regime; 000 people were executed nationwide under such orders. Hadi Ghaemi, the director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran (CHRI) based in New York, has criticized Raisi as a critical figure in a system that imprisons, tortures, and executes individuals who dare to speak out against state policies.
Raisi was a candidate in the presidential race of 2016 when a recording surfaced of a prominent religious figure discussing his involvement in the 1988 massacres. Subsequently, Raisi was defeated the following year by Hassan Rouhani, who was considered a more moderate contender.
Raisi, mentored by the nation’s highest authority figure, was considered a possible candidate to take over the highest leadership role alongside Khamenei’s son Mojtaba.
According to Karim Sadjadpour, a leading authority on Iran at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, the circumstances surrounding Sunday’s crash will likely be met with scepticism in Iran, where a deeply ingrained culture of conspiracy theories prevails. As a result, many Iranians will probably question the official account and suspect foul play rather than accepting President Raisi’s death as a mere accident.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final say in the Shiite theocracy, quickly named a little-known vice president as caretaker and insisted the government was in control, but the deaths mark yet another blow to a country beset by pressures both at home and abroad.
Iran has offered no cause for the crash nor suggested sabotage brought down the helicopter, which fell into mountainous terrain in a sudden, intense fog.
In Tehran, Iran’s capital, businesses were open, and children attended school on Monday. However, there was a noticeable presence of both uniformed and plainclothes security forces.
Later in the day, hundreds of mourners crowded into downtown Vali-e-Asr Square, holding posters of Raisi and waving Palestinian flags. Some men clutched prayer beads and were visibly crying. Women wearing black chadors gathered together, holding photos of the dead leader.
The crash comes as the Israel-Hamas war roils the region. Iran-backed Hamas led the attack that started the conflict, and Hezbollah, also supported by Tehran, has fired rockets at Israel. Last month, Iran launched its unprecedented drone-and-missile attack on Israel.
A hard-liner who formerly led the country’s judiciary, Raisi, 63, was viewed as a protege of Khamenei. During his tenure, relations have also continued to deteriorate with the West as Iran enriched uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels and supplied bomb-carrying drones to Russia for its war in Ukraine.
His government has also faced years of mass protests over the ailing economy and women’s rights, making the moment much more sensitive.
The crash killed all eight people aboard a Bell helicopter, which Iran purchased in the early 2000s, according to the state-run IRNA news agency. Among the dead were Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, the governor of Iran’s East Azerbaijan province, a senior cleric from Tabriz, a Revolutionary Guard official, and three crew members, IRNA said.
Iran has flown Bell helicopters extensively since the Shah’s era. However, Iranian aircraft face a shortage of parts, in part because of Western sanctions, and often fly without safety checks. Against that backdrop, former Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif sought to blame the United States for the crash in an interview Monday.
” One of the main culprits of yesterday’s tragedy is the United States, which … embargoed the sale of aircraft and aviation parts to Iran and does not allow the people of Iran to enjoy good aviation facilities,” Zarif said. “These will be recorded in the list of U.S. crimes against the Iranian people.”
State TV gave no immediate cause for the crash in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province. Footage released by IRNA early Monday showed what the agency described as the crash site across a steep valley in a green mountain range.
The U.S. has yet to comment publicly on Raisi’s death. State TV said Ali Bagheri Kani, an Iranian nuclear negotiator, will serve as the country’s acting foreign minister.
Condolences poured in from neighbours and allies after Iran confirmed there were no survivors. Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a post on the social media platform X that his country “stands with Iran in this time of sorrow.” In a statement released by the Kremlin, Russian President Vladimir Putin described Raisi “as a true friend of Russia.”
The death also stunned Iranians, and Khamenei declared five days of public mourning. But many have been ground down by the collapse of the country’s rial currency and worries about regional conflicts spinning out of control with Israel or even with Pakistan, which Iran exchanged fire with this year.
” He tried to carry out his duties well, but I don’t think he was as successful as he should have been,” said Mahrooz Mohammadi Zadeh, 53, a resident of Tehran. “He did carry out his duties. I’m not saying he didn’t, but he was a bit weak.”
Khamenei stressed that the business of Iran’s government would continue no matter what, but Raisi’s death raised the specter of what will happen after the 85-year-old supreme leader either resigns or dies. His office has the final say in all matters of state, and only two men have held the position since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Raisi had been discussed as one possible contender for the role. The only other person suggested has been Khamenei’s 55-year-old son, Mojtaba. However, some have raised concerns over the position of a family member, particularly after the revolution overthrew the hereditary Pahlavi monarchy of the shah.
For now, Khamenei has named the first vice president, Mohammad Mokhber, as caretaker in accordance with the constitution, which states that a new presidential election should be called within 50 days.
State media reported that Mokhber had received calls from officials and foreign governments in Raisi’s absence.
Iran’s state media announced the decision Monday morning, and an emergency meeting of the Cabinet was held. The Cabinet issued a statement afterwards pledging to follow Rashi’s path and that “with the help of God and the people, there will be no problem with managing the country.”
Raisi won Iran’s 2021 presidential election, a vote that saw the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history. The U.S. sanctioned him 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 Mideast, like 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 over her allegedly loose headscarf or hijab. The monthslong security crackdown that followed the demonstrations killed more than 500 people and saw over 22,000 detained.
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 country’s Islamic Revolution.