Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has been confirmed dead in a helicopter crash, state media reported Monday, with no signs of life found in the wreckage of the crash that occurred the day before.
The helicopter, which was also carrying Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and seven other people, went down Sunday afternoon as the officials were returning from the border with Azerbaijan, where Raisi was inaugurating a dam with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev.
Early Monday, state-affiliated media reported that the downed helicopter had been located near the village of Uzi in in northwest Iran and that rescuers were on the way.
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“Unfortunately, none of the passengers of this helicopter have been found with vital signs and the signs indicate that all of them were martyred,” the semi-official Tasnim news agency later reported.
The cause of the crash was unclear, though Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., said Sunday that he had been told by intelligence officials that there was “no evidence of foul play.”
Bad weather and heavy fog had kept rescuers from reaching the rural crash site for several hours, with state media airing prayers for Raisi’s safety in the meantime.
Although Raisi, 63, was the elected president and led the government, he still answered to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who is the head of state.
Khamenei had said earlier that there would be no disruption to state affairs. Under Iranian law, First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber will assume power after getting the nod from Khamenei. A presidential election must then be called within 50 days.
According to Tasnim, the other people on board the helicopter included Malek Rahmati, governor of the Iranian province of East Azerbaijan; Ayatollah Al Hashem, the Imam of Tabriz; Cmdr. Seyed Mahdi Mousavi, the head of the president’s security unit; and Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps member Ansarol Mahdi.
The helicopter’s pilot, co-pilot and a technical assistant also on board were not identified.
The officials were returning from the inauguration of the Qiz Qalasi dam on the Aras river that flows along the border between Iran and Azerbaijan.
Aliyev, the Azerbaijani president, said in a post on X that his country “stands ready to offer any assistance needed.”
“We were profoundly troubled by the news of a helicopter carrying the top delegation crash-landing in Iran,” he said.
State media showed Red Crescent rescuers moving through dense fog with only a few meters of visibility.
While they awaited news on Raisi, worried Iranians began offering prayers, with dozens gathering in the city of Qom, a holy city for Shiite Muslims, state media showed. Raisi’s Instagram page also posted a story asking people to pray for him.
While Iran flies a variety of helicopters, international sanctions have made it difficult for Tehran to obtain the required parts for them. Most of the helicopters operated by the military date to before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
Raisi is under sanctions by the U.S. over his involvement in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 at the end of the bloody Iran-Iraq war.
He was re-elected in 2021, in an election with the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history. A hard-liner, Raisi formerly led the country’s judiciary and was viewed as a protégé and potential successor of Khamenei.
In 2022, the death of 22-year-old Iranian woman Mahsa Amini while in custody of the country’s morality police set off nationwide protests that mushroomed into the largest challenge to the theocratic regime since its founding in 1979. The government rounded up protesters in a violent crackdown that killed hundreds of people.
In an interview with NBC News last year, Raisi defended the government’s response, warning that those who tried to sow instability in the Islamic Republic would pay a “big cost.”
Under Raisi, Iran has defied the United Nations in enriching uranium to levels close to weapons grade and barred nuclear inspectors. It has also supplied Russia with weapons for use in its war on Ukraine, and last month it launched a drone and missile attack on Israel in retaliation for a deadly Israeli strike on an Iranian diplomatic mission in Syria.
Tehran also provides support to Middle East groups such as the Houthi rebels in Yemen, who have been attacking ships in the Red Sea in protest of Israel’s war in the Gaza Strip, and Hezbollah in Lebanon, which has also been attacking Israel over the war.
