'No sign of life' at crash site of helicopter with Iran's president

A helicopter hovers over several vehicles with mountains in the background.

By Jon Gambrell

May 19, 2024 Updated 11:02 PM PT

DUBAI — Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country’s foreign minister and others have been found dead at the site of a helicopter crash Monday after an hours-long search through a foggy, mountainous region of the country’s northwest, state media reported. Raisi was 63.

The crash comes as the Middle East remains unsettled by the Israel-Hamas war, during which Raisi under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei launched an unprecedented drone-and-missile attack on Israel last month. Under Raisi, Iran enriched uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels, further escalating tensions with the West as Tehran also supplied bomb-carrying drones to Russia for its war in Ukraine and armed militia groups across the region.

Meanwhile, Iran has faced years of mass protests against its Shiite theocracy over its ailing economy and women’s rights — making the moment that much more sensitive for Tehran and the future of the country.

State TV gave no immediate cause for the crash in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province. Among the dead was Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, 60. The helicopter passengers also included the governor of that province and other officials and bodyguards, the state-run Islamic Republic 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 [the] helicopter.” The coordinates listed in the footage put the fire some 12 miles south of the Azerbaijani-Iranian border, on the side of a steep mountain.

Footage released by 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.”

Khamenei himself had 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 worshipers he was addressing.

Rescue team members work in fog at the scene of a crash of a helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.

However, the supreme leader also stressed the business of Iran’s government would continue no matter what. Under the Iranian Constitution, Iran’s first vice 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 Mohammad 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 that 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.”

Raisi, a hard-liner who formerly led the country’s judiciary, was viewed as a protege of Khamenei. 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. But some have raised concerns over the position being given to a family member for the third time since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, especially since that event overthrew the hereditary Pahlavi monarchy of the shah.

Raisi had been on the border with Azerbaijan early Sunday to inaugurate a dam with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev. The dam is the third the two nations have built on the Aras River. The visit came despite chilly relations between the nations over a gun attack on Azerbaijan’s Embassy in Tehran in 2023 and Azerbaijan’s diplomatic relations with Israel, which Iran’s Shiite theocracy views as its main enemy in the region.

Rescue team members carry the body of a victim on a stretcher amid fog after a helicopter crashed.

Iran flies a variety of helicopters within the country, but international sanctions make it difficult to obtain parts for them. Its military air fleet largely dates to before the Islamic Revolution. IRNA published images it described as Raisi taking off in what resembled a Bell 412 helicopter, with a blue-and-white paint scheme previously seen in published photographs.

Raisi won Iran’s 2021 presidential election, a vote that saw the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history. Raisi was sanctioned by the U.S. 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 enriched uranium at nearly weapons-grade levels and hampered international inspections. Iran has armed Russia in its war on Ukraine, as well as launching the drone-and-missile attack on Israel amid its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. It also continued arming proxy groups in the Mideast, including Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.

Iran for years has seen mass protests. The most recent involved the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, a woman who had been detained over allegedly not wearing a hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of authorities. The months-long security crackdown that followed the demonstrations killed more than 500 people and saw more than 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 revolution.

Gambrell writes for the Associated Press. AP writers Nasser Karimi in Tehran and Aamer Madhani in Washington contributed to this report.