DUBAI/TEHRAN
Iran’s supreme leader
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei announced on Monday five days of mourning for President
Ebrahim Raisi who died in a helicopter crash.Rescue team members work at the crash site of a helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Varzaghan, northwestern Iran on May 20, 2024.
“I announce five days of
public mourning and offer my condolences to the dear people of Iran,” said
Khamenei in an official statement a day after the death of Raisi and other
officials in the crash in East Azerbaijan province.
Khamenei has appointed First
Vice President Mohammad Mokhber acting president and has a maximum period of 50
days to hold elections following the death of Raisi, Iran’s official news
agency IRNA reported.
Raisi, the country’s foreign
minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and others have been found dead at the site of
a helicopter crash Monday after an hourslong search through a foggy,
mountainous region of the country’s northwest, state media reported. Raisi was
63.
The government cabinet has
appointed Deputy Foreign Minister Ali Bagheri Kani as acting foreign minister.
Lebanon and Syria on Monday
announced three days of national mourning for the Iranian president and foreign
minister, who were killed in a helicopter crash overnight near the Azerbaijan
border.
Iran enjoys sway in both
countries, backing the Lebanese armed group Hezbollah in Lebanon and supporting
Syria’s government and security forces stay in power throughout more than a
decade of war.
“I can’t tell you how sorry I
am about this incident that happened. Especially that the foreign minister had
become a friend,” Lebanon’s Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib told reporters
on Monday.
The helicopter also carried
the governor of Iran’s East Azerbaijan province, other officials and
bodyguards, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.
Early Monday morning, Turkish
authorities released what they described as drone footage showing what appeared
to be a fire in the wilderness that they “suspected to be wreckage of
helicopter.” The coordinates listed in the footage put the fire some 20 kilometers
(12 miles) south of the Azerbaijan-Iranian border on the side of a steep
mountain.
Footage released by the IRNA
early Monday showed what the agency described as the crash site, across a steep
valley in a green mountain range. Soldiers speaking in the local Azeri language
said: “There it is, we found it.”
Condolences started pouring in from neighbors and allies after Iran confirmed there were no survivors from the crash. Pakistan announced a day of mourning and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in a post on X that his country “stands with Iran in this time of sorrow.” Leaders of Egypt and Jordan also offered condolences, as did Syrian President Bashar Assad.
Azerbaijan’s President Ilham
Aliyev said he and his government were “deeply shocked” — Raisi was returning
on Sunday after traveling to Iran’s border with Azerbaijan to inaugurate a dam
with Aliyev when the crash happened.
Turkish President Recep Tayyip
Erdogan conveyed his condolences. Russian President Vladimir Putin, in a
statement released by the Kremlin, described Raisi “as a true friend of
Russia.”
Khamenei, who had himself
urged the public to pray Sunday night, stressed the business of Iran’s
government would continue no matter what.
Under the Iranian
constitution, Iran’s vice first president takes over if the president dies,
with Khamenei’s assent, and a new presidential election would be called within
50 days.
First Vice President Mokhber
already had begun receiving calls from officials and foreign governments in
Raisi’s absence, state media reported. An emergency meeting of Iran’s Cabinet
was held as state media made the announcement Monday morning. The Cabinet
issued a statement afterward pledging it would follow Raisi’s path and that
“with the help of God and the people, there will be no problem with management
of the country.”
A hard-liner who formerly led
the country’s judiciary, Raisi was viewed as a protégé of Khamenei and some
analysts had suggested he could replace the 85-year-old leader after Khamenei’s
death or resignation.
With Raisi’s death, the only
other person so far suggested has been Mojtaba Khameini, the 55-year-old son to
the supreme leader. However, some have raised concerns over the position being
taken only for the third time since 1979 to a family member, particularly after
the Islamic Revolution overthrew the hereditary Pahlavi monarchy of the shah.
Raisi won Iran’s 2021
presidential election, a vote that saw the lowest turnout in the Islamic
Republic’s history. Raisi is sanctioned by the US in part over his involvement
in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 at the end of
the bloody Iran-Iraq war.
Under Raisi, Iran now enriches
uranium at nearly weapons-grade levels and hampers international inspections.
Iran has armed Russia in its war on Ukraine, as well as launched a massive
drone-and-missile attack on Israel amid its war against Hamas in the Gaza
Strip. It also has continued arming proxy groups in the Mideast, like Yemen’s
Houthi rebels and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Meanwhile, mass protests in
the country have raged for years. The most recent involved the 2022 death of
Mahsa Amini, a woman who had been earlier detained over allegedly not wearing a
hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of authorities. The monthslong security
crackdown that followed the demonstrations killed more than 500 people and saw
over 22,000 detained.
In March, a United Nations
investigative panel found that Iran was responsible for the “physical violence”
that led to Amini’s death.
Raisi is the second Iranian president to die in office. In 1981, a bomb blast killed President Mohammad Ali Rajai in the chaotic days after the country’s Islamic Revolution.
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