Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi and his companions, including Foreign Minister Amirabdolahian, were announced dead after the helicopter carrying them crashed in the mountainous northwest reaches of Iran on Sunday.
A helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country’s foreign minister and other officials crashed in the mountainous northwest reaches of Iran on Sunday afternoon.
Rescue teams were immediately deployed to the area to find the accident site, but due to extremely fogy weather, it took more than 12 hours to find where exactly the helicopter crushed. Raisi and his companions were traveling in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province on a business trip.
Iran’s state TV first called the accident as a “hard landing” happened near Jolfa, a city on the border with the nation of Azerbaijan, some 600 kilometers (375 miles) northwest of the Iranian capital, Tehran.
But as searching continued, the state TV put it farther east near the village of Uzi, with details still remaining unclear. After more than 12 hours and as the sun rose Monday, Raisi and the others on board were found dead, Iran’s state media reported.
What happens now?
Born in 1960 in northeast Iran’s holy city of Mashhad, Raisi was only 20 when he was named prosecutor-general of Karaj, a city next to Tehran. He then served as Tehran’s prosecutor-general from 1989 to 1994, deputy chief of the Judicial Authority for a decade from 2004, and then national prosecutor-general in 2014. In 2021, Raisis was elected as president of Iran.
According to Article 131 of the Islamic Republic’s constitution, if a president dies in office, the first vice president takes over and becomes president, a process that requires confirmation of the supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. later, and within a maximum period of 50 days, a council consisting of the first vice president, the speaker of parliament and the head of the judiciary must arrange an early election for a new president.
