DUBAI, United Arab Emirates. A helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country’s foreign minister, and other officials apparently crashed in the mountainous northwest reaches of Iran on Sunday, sparking a massive rescue operation in a fog-shrouded forest as the public was urged to pray.
The likely crash comes as Iran, under Raisi and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, launched an unprecedented drone-and-missile attack on Israel last month and has enriched uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels. The country has also faced years of mass protests against its Shiite theocracy over an ailing economy and women’s rights, making this moment highly sensitive for Tehran as the Israel-Hamas war inflames the wider Middle East.
Raisi was traveling in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province. State TV reported a “hard landing” near Jolfa, a city on the border with Azerbaijan, approximately 600 kilometers (375 miles) northwest of the Iranian capital, Tehran. Later reports placed the incident farther east near the village of Uzi, but details remained contradictory.
Traveling with Raisi were Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, the governor of Iran’s East Azerbaijan province, and other officials and bodyguards, according to the state-run IRNA news agency. One local government official described the event as a “crash,” while others referred to it as either a “hard landing” or an “incident.”
Neither IRNA nor state TV offered information on Raisi’s condition in the hours following the crash. However, hard-liners urged the public to pray for him. State TV aired images of hundreds of faithful, some with hands outstretched in supplication, praying at Imam Reza Shrine in the city of Mashhad, one of Shiite Islam’s holiest sites, as well as in Qom and other locations across the country. State television’s main channel aired the prayers nonstop.
In Tehran, a group of men kneeling on the side of the street clasped strands of prayer beads and watched a video of Raisi praying, some of them visibly weeping. “If anything happens to him, we’ll be heartbroken,” said one of the men, Mehdi Seyedi. “May the prayers work and may he return to the arms of the nation safe and sound.”
In comments aired on state TV, Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi stated: “The esteemed president and company were on their way back aboard some helicopters and one of the helicopters was forced to make a hard landing due to the bad weather and fog.” He added that various rescue teams were en route to the region, but poor weather conditions, including fog and heavy rain, were hampering efforts.
A rescue helicopter attempted to reach the crash site but could not land due to heavy mist, emergency services spokesman Babak Yektaparast told IRNA. Late in the evening, Turkey’s defense ministry announced it had sent an unmanned aerial vehicle and was preparing to send a helicopter with night vision capabilities to join the search-and-rescue efforts.
Long after sunset, Iranian government spokesman Ali Bahadori Jahromi acknowledged the challenging conditions of the search. “It is the right of the people and the media to be aware of the latest news about the president’s helicopter accident, but considering the coordinates of the incident site and the weather conditions, there is ‘no’ new news whatsoever until now,” he wrote on the social platform X. “In these moments, patience, prayer, and trust in relief groups are the way forward.”
Khamenei himself also urged the public to pray. “We hope that God the Almighty returns the dear president and his colleagues in full health to the arms of the nation,” Khamenei said, drawing an “amen” from the worshippers he was addressing.
Raisi, 63, a hard-liner who formerly led the country’s judiciary, is viewed as a protégé of Khamenei. Some analysts have suggested he could replace the 85-year-old leader after Khamenei’s death or resignation. Raisi had been on the border with Azerbaijan earlier Sunday to inaugurate a dam with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev. The dam is the third one that the two nations built on the Aras River, despite chilly relations between the nations.
Iran flies a variety of helicopters, but international sanctions make it difficult to obtain parts for them. Its military air fleet also largely dates back to before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. IRNA published images it described as Raisi taking off in what resembled a Bell helicopter with a blue-and-white paint scheme.
Raisi won Iran’s 2021 presidential election, a vote that saw the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history. He is sanctioned by the U.S. in part over his involvement in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988.
Gary P Hernal started college at UP Diliman and received his BA in Economics from San Sebastian College, Manila, and Masters in Information Systems Management from Keller Graduate School of Management of DeVry University in Oak Brook, IL. He has 25 years of copy editing and management experience at Thomson West, a subsidiary of Thomson Reuters.
