Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has been killed in a helicopter crash in a mountainous area of the country.
Rescuers on Monday found the helicopter that had been carrying the president and other officials including Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, who also died, the semi-official Mehr news agency reported. It crashed on Sunday near Tavil village in northwest Iran.
Raisi had been returning from an event on the border with Azerbaijan in a party of three helicopters when his craft went down. There had been dense fog in the region, making conditions difficult for rescue teams.
The president’s death comes at a time of turmoil in the Middle East. Iran in April launched an unprecedented missile and drone strike on Israel, while the Jewish state is in its seventh month of a war to oust Iran-backed Hamas forces from the Gaza Strip.
Raisi, an ultraconservative cleric in his 60s who won a presidential election in 2021, had been seen as a favorite to eventually succeed Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran’s supreme leader.
Raisi’s air fleet consisted of high-ranking officials including the foreign minister, who was believed to be on board the president’s aircraft at the time.
Both Raisi and Amirabdollahian oversaw the restoration of Iran’s diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia through a Chinese-brokered deal announced in March 2023. But it was a time when there was also a stalemate in negotiations to revive Iran’s nuclear deal with world powers and lift economic sanctions.
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said Sunday that intelligence agencies had informed him there is no evidence of foul play, NBC reported. (continues below)
Iranian Shi'ite pilgrims pray for Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi following the crash of the helicopter that took his life and that of his foreign minister, at the Imam Ali shrine in the holy city of Najaf, Iraq, on Sunday. (Photo: Reuters)
Iranian television earlier aired live footage of scores of ambulances amid heavy rain and fog. The Turkish Defence Ministry said it had dispatched an Akinci drone in response to a request from Iran.
The European Union activated its rapid response mapping service following a request for help from Iran, the bloc’s Commissioner for Crisis Management, Janez Lenarčič, said in a post on X.
Earlier Sunday, Raisi met his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev to inaugurate a jointly developed dam on the border between the two countries.
Raisi had been accused by rights groups of being instrumental in the mass execution of thousands of political dissidents in the late 1980s. In 2018, London-based Amnesty International said he presided over a “death commission” and called on the United Nations to investigate him for crimes against humanity.