Death of Iran President Ebrahim Raisi confirmed by State media after rescuers reach crash site

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi, widely seen as a candidate to become the country’s next supreme leader, was killed in a helicopter crash on Sunday.

His death, along with that of Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, was announced by state media early on Monday after rescuers spent hours trying to locate and reach the accident site in a mountainous part of north-western Iran.

Raisi was returning from an event on the border with Azerbaijan in a party of three helicopters when his craft went down with nine people on board, all of whom died. There was dense fog in the region, making conditions difficult for rescue teams. Iranian TV showed a crashed helicopter with only its tail intact. The other two helicopters landed safely.

Rescuers participate in what the Iranian Red Crescent Society says is a search and rescue operation following the crash of a helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, at an unidentified location. 20 May 2024. (Iranian Red Crescent Society/Handout via Reuters)

A helicopter carrying Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi takes off, near the Iran-Azerbaijan border, May 19, 2024. The helicopter with Raisi on board later crashed. (Photo: Ali Hamed Haghdoust/IRNA/WANA (West Asia News Agency))

The 63-year-old president was an ultraconservative cleric and close to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, 84, who has the ultimate say over Iran’s foreign and military strategy. He harboured a deep distrust toward the US and Israel and worked to bolster Iran’s ties with China and Russia.

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The crash comes at a time of turmoil in the Middle East as the war in Gaza between Israel and Hamas rages. The conflict has edged Iran, which backs the Islamist militant group, and Israel closer to all-out conflict. It’s led to other Tehran-supported groups, including the Houthis in Yemen and Shiite militias in Iraq, to attack ships around the Red Sea and US bases.

In April, Iran launched an unprecedented barrage of missiles and drones at Israel, its sworn enemy, after accusing the Jewish state of assassinating senior military commanders in Syria. Raisi vowed to take revenge and pushed back against calls in the West for restraint. Still, the strikes were effectively announced in advance, allowing Israel and its allies to intercept most of them and ensure they caused little damage. The Jewish state reacted with a limited strike on an air base in Iran.

Flowers were placed outside the Iranian embassy to pay tribute to Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi, Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and other victims of a recent helicopter crash. 20 May 2024. (Photo: Reuters/Maxim Shemetov)

While tensions between the two countries have eased, they’re still high with the Israeli military in its eighth month of a war to destroy Hamas — designated a terrorist organisation by the US and European Union. Raisi was a vocal critic of the conflict and called on the Islamic world to rally behind Palestinians.

He came to power when he won a presidential election in 2021, replacing the more moderate Hassan Rouhani. The clerical establishment blocked many reformist candidates from running and turnout was the lowest in the Islamic Republic’s history, reflecting Iranians’ discontent with the economy suffering under Western sanctions and inflation well into double digits.

Raisi was 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.

Presidential election

Raisi is set to be succeeded by Vice President Mohammad Mokhber, who has represented Iran on many recent overseas trips and who, like many senior Iranian officials, is subject to US sanctions. Elections will probably be held within 50 days, as per the constitution, and most Iran analysts doubt there will be any change in policy until or even after the elections.

“It is very likely that the regime’s leadership, including Khamenei, will work to manage a presidential election to ensure a suitable replacement succeeds Raisi while keeping out reformist or moderate candidates, as has been the practice since 2021,” said Gregory Brew, an analyst at Eurasia Group, a geopolitical risk consultancy.

In March last year, Raisi and Amirabdollahian, the foreign minister, restored Iran’s diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia in a deal China helped broker. The agreement improved relations between the regional rivals.

Under Raisi, Iran also agreed a prisoner swap with the US in September in a deal President Joe Biden hoped would lower tensions and possibly lead to an eventual restoration of a 2015 nuclear deal that curbed Tehran’s atomic activities in return for the easing of sanctions. Then-President Donald Trump pulled the US out of the accord in 2018, a move that emboldened Iran’s hardliners, who said the country got little in the way of economic benefits.

Read more in Daily Maverick: US prisoners fly out of Iran in swap deal after $6-billion unfrozen

Around the same time, Iran’s oil exports — by far its biggest source of foreign exchange — were soaring, with analysts taking it as a sign the US was easing its enforcement of sanctions.

Iran’s economy has struggled despite the extra revenue from crude shipments. Inflation remains around 35%.

“New elections are likely to demonstrate the broad dissatisfaction of the public as well as the regime’s rock-bottom credibility,” said Eurasia’s Brew. “There is likely to be public resistance and possibly even some violence in response to another stage-managed election, though it is unlikely to present a serious challenge to security forces or the regime’s hold on power.”

On Sunday evening and early Monday, Iranian television aired footage of scores of ambulances amid heavy rain and fog trying to reach the downed helicopter. The Turkish ministry of defence said it had dispatched a drone in response to a request from Iran to help locate and monitor the crash site. The EU helped by activating its rapid response mapping service.

Raisi had met his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev to inaugurate a jointly developed dam on the border between the two countries early on Sunday. DM