Analysis
Article reserved for subscribers
The air fleet of Iran, a country placed under an American embargo for forty-five years, is one of the most dilapidated in the world. The plane in which President Ebrahim Raïssi was traveling was almost 30 years old when it crashed in a mountainous area on May 19.
Who killed Ebrahim Raïssi, the former Iranian president who died in a helicopter crash on May 19? For the former Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mohammad Javad Zarif, the culprit is obvious: it is the persistent American sanctions against his country which cost the life of the ultraconservative cleric, in power since 2021. The successive Western embargoes put in place since the creation of the Islamic Republic in 1979 are, according to him, responsible for the degradation of the Iranian air fleet.
A hypothesis supported by his Russian counterpart and ally, Sergei Lavrov, according to which the countries sanctioned by the United States “do not receive spare parts for American equipment, including aviation”. “The Iranian government is responsible for the decision to fly a 45-year-old helicopter,” Washington retorts. An investigation has been launched to try to clarify the circumstances of this crash which occurred in “difficult weather conditions”, according to Tehran.
An aging fleet
The helicopter that transported Ebrahim Raïssi is a Bell 212, an American-made model developed for the first time.