Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi — once seen as a potential successor to 85-year-old Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei — died after his helicopter crashed into trees in a mountainous northwestern region of the Islamic Republic on Sunday.
The Iranian branch of the Red Crescent humanitarian network said on Monday its search and rescue teams had reached the crash site and “found no signs of the helicopter’s occupants being alive.”
The discovery of the burned-out wreckage of Raisi’s helicopter among blackened trees — with seemingly only the tail surviving the crash — followed hours of searches in the fog-bound mountain valleys of Dizmar forest near the border with Azerbaijan.
Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian was also on board and is presumed dead, along with the head of the presidential guard Mehdi Mousavi, East Azerbaijan Governor Malek Rahmati, Representative of the Iranian Supreme Leader in East Azerbaijan Mohammad Ali Ale-Hashem and the helicopter’s pilot, co-pilot and crew.
Raisi, 63, was a conservative cleric and former judiciary chief.
Raisi had been returning from a visit to the Azerbaijan border, where he met with President Ilham Aliyev. The pair cut the ribbon on a major dam along the Aras river border.
In a statement issued after Raisi’s death was confirmed, Hamas expressed “our shared feelings of sadness and pain” with the people of Iran and “complete solidarity” with Tehran.