Intense searches continued on Sunday evening in northwestern Iran to find the helicopter carrying President Ebrahim Raïssi which was the victim of an “accident”, according to officials and official media. “An accident occurred with the helicopter carrying the president” in the Jofa region, in the province of East Azerbaijan, state television said. The search was made very difficult by “unfavorable weather conditions”, Interior Minister Ahmed Vahidi said on state television, referring to a “hard landing” of the aircraft, without giving details.
President Raïssi, aged 63, was on board the plane in the company of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the governor of the province and the main imam of the region, according to the Irna agency. The aircraft was part of a convoy of three helicopters carrying the presidential delegation, two of which landed without incident in Tabriz, the large city in the northwest, from where Ebrahim Raïssi was to reach Tehran.
A possible hard landing
Still uncertain several hours after the disappearance of the helicopter, developments in the situation were closely followed internationally, particularly in the United States, a country which does not maintain diplomatic relations with Iran. “We are closely following reports of a possible hard landing of a helicopter carrying the president and the Iranian foreign minister,” said a diplomatic spokesperson in Washington. Iranian state television early in the evening broadcast images of faithful praying for the health of the president in several mosques, including that of the holy city of Mashhad (north-east).
It also showed images of several members of the Iranian Red Crescent walking through thick fog in the search area before nightfall. “More than 20 rescue teams equipped with full equipment, including drones and rescue dogs,” had “been sent to the site,” according to Irna. The vice-president, Mohammad Mokhber, left Tehran late in the afternoon to reach Tabriz in the company of several ministers, according to the government spokesperson. It is he who would take over as president in the event of the death of Ebrahim Raïssi, pending the holding of a presidential election within 50 days.
With the President of Azerbaijan
Ebrahim Raïssi visited the province of Eastern Azerbaijan on Sunday, where he notably inaugurated a dam in the company of the President of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliev, on the border between the two countries. During a joint press conference, he again supported the Palestinians in the war in the Gaza Strip between Hamas and Israel. “We believe that Palestine is the first issue of the Muslim world, and we are convinced that the people of Iran and Azerbaijan always support the people of Palestine and Gaza and hate the Zionist regime,” he said .
Iran launched an unprecedented attack on April 13 against Israel, with 350 drones and missiles, most of which were intercepted with the help of the United States and several other allied countries. Ebrahim Raïssi, who has the title of Ayatollah, has been President of the Islamic Republic for almost three years. Considered an ultraconservative, he was elected on June 18, 2021 in the first round of a vote marked by a record abstention for a presidential election and the absence of strong competitors.
Present on the American blacklist of sanctioned Iranian officials
Always wearing his black turban and wearing a long religious cloak, he succeeded the moderate Hassan Rouhani, who beat him in the 2017 presidential election and could no longer run again after two consecutive terms. Ebrahim Raïssi emerged strengthened at the end of the legislative elections held in March, the first national vote since the protest movement which shook Iran at the end of 2022 following the death of Mahsa Amini, a young woman arrested for non-compliance. compliance with the strict dress code of the Islamic Republic. The Iranian president then welcomed “a new historic failure inflicted on Iran’s enemies after the riots” of 2022.
Born in November 1960 in the holy Shiite city of Mashhad (north-east), Ebrahim Raïssi spent most of his career in the judicial system, notably being prosecutor general of Tehran then prosecutor general of the country. The Iranian president is on the American blacklist of Iranian officials sanctioned by Washington for “complicity in serious human rights violations”, accusations dismissed as null and void by the authorities in Tehran.
Aged 60, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian was appointed head of Iranian diplomacy by President Raïssi in July 2021. A fierce supporter of pro-Iran groups in the Middle East, this diplomat was close to the powerful general Qassem Soleimani, the head of the Quds Force of the Revolutionary Guards killed in Iraq in 2020 by an American strike.