Five days of mourning after Iran leader’s death
The helicopter that crashed, killing Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, and foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, either had no transponder fitted or had it turned off, according to an initial investigation by Turkish rescue group that found the wreckage.
Turkey’s transport minister, Abdulkadir Uraloğlu, told reporters that on hearing news of the crash, Turkish authorities had checked for a signal from the helicopter’s transponders, which can broadcast height and location information. “But unfortunately, [we think] most likely the transponder system was turned off or that 22 →
the helicopter did not have one,” he said.
It also emerged yesterday that the Iranian government had been urged in a memo by officials to purchase two Russian helicopters for its leaders amid concerns over the maintenance of its fleet of ageing Canadian helicopters.
The former foreign affairs minister Javad Zarif blamed US sanctions for making it hard to purchase spares and said the crash would be “recorded in the blacklist of American crimes against the Iranian nation”.
The helicopter involved in the crash was a Bell 212, a two-blade aircraft manufactured in the United States capable of carrying 15 people. It was around 10 years old.
An investigation team has already arrived at the site of the crash in East Azerbaijan province, and will also be examining whether pre-flight weather checks were made. Two helicopters in the group completed the journey safely. There has been no serious allegation of sabotage.
Five days of mourning have been announced and the president’s funeral is tomorrow, when officials say the whole country will be closed. An election for his successor is expected at the end of next month, probably 21 June.
The helicopter crashed on Sunday morning in thick fog in a remote mountainous part of northern Iran, hampering a rescue effort that was unlikely to have saved lives even if the Red Crescent crews had been able to reach the victims more quickly. The charred bodies were revealed by a Turkish government surveillance drone after the fog lifted and the sun rose yesterday morning.
State media reported that the aircraft had “hit the mountain and disintegrated” on impact, leaving “no signs of life”.
Raisi and his entourage were on their way back from East Azerbaijan province, where he had been attending the opening of the Giz Galasi hydroelectric complex, a joint project of Iran and Azerbaijan.
The crash killed all nine people on board, leaving a leadership vacuum that hardliners will rush to fill.
Russia’s president, Vladimir Putin, praised Raisi as an “outstanding politician” and said his death was an “irreplaceable loss”.
Iranian-made Shahed kamikaze drones have been critical in helping Russia attack civilian and military installations in Ukraine.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, also praised Raisi saying that Iran had lost “a sincere and valuable servant”.
Politicians opposed to the Iranian regime, including the EU foreign affairs chief, Josep Borrell, expressed their condolences over Raisi’s death, but even this humanitarian gesture angered Iranian opponents of the repressive regime.
Britain’s security minister, Tom Tugendhat, was an exception, sending out a message on X: “President Raisi’s regime has murdered thousands at home, and targeted people here in Britain and across Europe. I will not mourn him.”
The Iranian poet laureate Shirin Ebadi said: “The people of Iran had hoped to see him brought to justice, to witness how he would struggle and plead for his own exoneration. He did not deserve such an easy death.”
The death of the president, who was largely seen as unimpeachably loyal to the 85-year-old supreme leader, presents the regime with the task of hurriedly selecting a candidate to win the forthcoming presidential elections – along with the more medium-term challenge of deciding on an alternative to Raisi as a successor to the supreme leader himself.
While Raisi, 63, was widely seen as a leading candidate to become supreme leader, other contenders mentioned include the Ali Khamenei’s son have been mentioned.
Dr Afshin Shahi, senior lecturer in Middle East politics at Keele University, said: “Under Raisi’s leadership, the Islamic Republic faced the worst legitimacy crisis in its history.
“Despite severe crackdowns on the Women, Life, Freedom movement, most people considered Raisi an irrelevant figure, directing their anti-regime slogans at the Supreme Leader and IRGC instead.”
With some anti-regime groups openly celebrating Raisi’s demise, Mohammad Movahedi-Azad, the attorney general of the country, called on prosecutors to take “quick, effective and deterrent action … against the people who by publishing information about the killing of a president attempt to disturb the psychological security of the society and disturb the public mind”.