Yesterday, in a development that nobody expected, the President of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, died in a helicopter crash. He was not the only high-profile Iranian politician aboard, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, Governor-General of East Azerbaijan Province Malak Rahmati, and the Representative of the Supreme Leader in East Azerbaijan Mohammad Ali Ale-Hashem went down along with the President.
The beginning
The President and his entourage were initially in Azerbaijan for a diplomatic meeting with President Ilham Aliyev. The meeting seemed to be nonmilitary in nature, and after it was finished, the Iranian delegation, as they normally would, boarded their helicopters and left for home.
Now, we don’t have all the facts about what happened between the time the helicopter lifted off and the time of the crash. I am not saying that there was no foul play involved. That is for the investigation launched by the Iranian authorities to decide.
What we do know is that there was some very bad weather on the route home. There were two other helicopters that made the journey with President Raisi, both are still intact. Somehow President Raisi’s helicopter, the one carrying all the important people on it, went down in the worst possible location.
The search
Search teams were sent out by the Iranian government immediately. Initially, the fog was so dense that these teams could not effectively do their jobs. It took hours for the search teams to get close to the site.
Other nations stepped up to aid. Turkey sent a drone to help look for any heat signatures that could be found from the crash site. The Russians sent two helicopters with 50 special forces men as well.
The drone that Turkey sent soon ran into the same problems that the men on the ground were facing: harsh weather conditions and dense fog. I saw some of the footage, we are talking fog dense enough that one can only see a few feet in front of themselves.
Eventually, after hours and hours, the drone picked up a heat signature from somewhere, and teams were sent to investigate it. They initially found no trace of anything, which I can assume was due to the fog yet again.
Finally, almost a day after the helicopter was reported to have gone missing, teams reached the site of the crash. It was indeed a crash, leaving no survivors. The President and his entourage were officially confirmed dead by the Iranian government.
I had monitored this closely all day yesterday and this search was marred by many mishaps, which I don’t boil down to incompetence but simply bad luck due to the horrible weather. With fog and mountainous terrain with heavy forestry and limited road access, it was the worst place they could have gone down.
I believe that the Turkish drone saved the day here, the heat-seeking ability finally pinpointing the site of the crash. Despite this, it came too late. If anyone had survived the initial crash, they would have been badly injured and wouldn’t have been able to survive for more than a few hours.
The aftermath
Supreme Leader Khamenei said that despite this, the operations of the Iranian state will continue as planned. An investigation has been launched into the cause of this incident, and we will likely know relatively soon what it was.
The Supreme Leader has also announced five days of mourning for the fallen, with other allied states in the region announcing their own mourning periods. There will also likely be a state funeral for these men in the coming days.
The duties of the President of Iran have now fallen to the previous Vice-President, Mohammad Mokhber, who will act as President for 50 days until new elections can be held. I do not yet know if he is going to stand for election or not.
The duties of the Foreign Ministry have now fallen to the previous Deputy Foreign Minister, Ali Bagheri. Again, whether he stays in his post as the permanent Foreign Minister after the elections, it is too early to say.
Questions
I have many questions about this. First, why did the President fly in such bad weather to begin with? Surely, he and his pilots watch the weather report. These are intelligent men; they would not be where they are if they were stupid.
Second, how is it that the other two helicopters managed to get through all of this unscathed? I cannot believe that the three vehicles would have been flying so far apart as to where they wouldn’t be facing the same conditions.
Third, why were all their eggs in one basket? Iran lost two of their most talented politicians. I had covered Foreign Minister Amir-Abdollahian’s work in the region before. He has been instrumental in getting the Axis of Resistance to coordinate their efforts. I was planning on watching him for a good while. Well, not anymore.
This could have been avoided had they dispersed among the three helicopters. At least that way, the damage would not have been so severe as to decapitate the Iranian diplomatic clique.
Fourth, if we want to go down the sabotage/hostile action route, why was there not an entire wing of security aircraft ensuring the President’s safety? That is what we do in the US. Biden would never leave a hostile nation without air support.
I wasn’t in the room, I don’t know what the President and his entourage were thinking when they left, and I don’t even know the exact cause of the crash. If it was really a crash, it makes no sense. If it wasn’t a crash, it really makes no sense. There should have been more guard rails somehow.
Conclusion
As I have said before, the Iranian government is investigating this event. We do not truly know what happened yet, and anyone who claims to know what it was is most likely lying. I personally believe it was sabotage, but I could be wrong.
I just think it is very convenient that we have had one near death and one death of two prominent people in the past week. There is also the fact that the Iranians were coming back from Azerbaijan, a country that is more friendly with the US and Israel than Iran.
The world had better hope that this was indeed an accident caused by bad weather, because if not, I fear that we may have had our 21st century Franz Ferdinand event. There was a point during the search where I started to think that they would never find that helicopter.
We will just have to wait and see.
