There was an incident in northwest Iran on Sunday with a helicopter in which President Ebrahim Raisi was said to have been sitting. According to Iranian state media, it was initially unclear whether Raisi was injured in the accident. According to the information, Iranian Foreign Minister Hussein Amirabdollahian was also on board. Some media are reporting a “hard landing”, and Interior Minister Ahmed Vahidi also used this formulation. There was talk of a “crash” in other media. How this came about is not yet known.
The accident occurred in East Azerbaijan, a province in northwestern Iran. The Iranian News Agency Tasnim News reports that the president was traveling in a convoy of three helicopters. Two of them landed safely. The Irna news agency reports that, according to local residents, the helicopter crashed in a forest area in Dizmar between the villages of Uzi and Pir Dawood.
Rescue workers are currently trying to reach the crashed helicopter. 40 teams will be deployed, and sniffer dogs and drones will also be used. Interior Minister Vahidi told state television that rescue workers were being hampered by heavy fog in the area.
Before the accident, Raisi had traveled to the Iran-Azerbaijan border to inaugurate a dam with his Azerbaijani colleague Ilham Aliyev. It was intended to be a sign of cooperation after the relationship between the neighboring countries was recently tense.
Iran’s air force is considered to be very outdated and its modernization is making little progress in the face of strict international sanctions. Many of the planes and helicopters date from before the 1979 Islamic Revolution, when the country had close ties with the United States. It is not yet clear whether the accident is related to outdated machines.
After the accident, numerous government supporters prayed for Ebrahim Raisi. According to media reports, dozens of believers gathered in the central pilgrimage shrine in his hometown of Mashhad in the northeast of the country.
Raisi is number two in Iran
Raisi was sworn in as Iran’s new president in August 2021. The 63-year-old, ultra-conservative cleric officially became the successor to Hassan Ruhani, who was no longer allowed to run after two terms in office. As the top candidate of the political hardliners and the preferred candidate and protégé of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Raisi won the presidential election with almost 62 percent of the vote. Born in 1960 in Mashhad in northeastern Iran, Raisi is considered very influential within the Islamic system. He also maintains a close relationship with Supreme Leader Khamenei.
Raisi worked in the judiciary for over three decades and was appointed head of the judiciary in 2019. He is said to have been responsible for numerous arrests and executions of political dissidents in his previous role as a public prosecutor. According to the constitution, Raisi is only number two in the country because Khamenei is the actual head of state and also has the final say in all strategic matters.
Under Raisi’s government, Iran’s relationship with the West deteriorated. The EU decided on several occasions to impose sanctions against the country – because of human rights violations, but also because of Iranian support for the Russian war against Ukraine. At the same time, there is growing concern that Iran will become a nuclear power. The international nuclear negotiations with Tehran have reached a dead end.
Iran is deeply hostile to Israel. In April, the regime attacked Israel for the first time not through regional proxies, but directly – in response to the bombing of the Iranian embassy compound in Syria’s capital Damascus. This attack also fueled fears of further escalation in the Middle East.