Iran President Raisi. Photo credit: Islamic Republic News Agency
According to the Islamic Republic News Agency, a state-run media outlet, Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi has died in a helicopter crash in a rugged, hard-to-reach northwest region of the country.
President Raisi was returning from a ceremony to celebrate a dam opening on the border with Azerbaijan when the helicopter crashed in the Varzaqan region on Sunday, the news agency said.
Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, Governor of East Azarbaijan Province Malek Rahmati, and other leaders were also reported to have been on board the helicopter, the IRNA said.
Fog and difficult terrain has reportedly hampered the search and recovery efforts.
Iran has been funding Hamas terrorists in Gaza, prolonging the war that Israel is fighting against terrorism in its borders, which began when Hamas kidnapped and killed Israelis during a raid on Oct. 7, 2023. Terrorists are still holding over 130 Jewish men, women, and children in what has been seen as the worst event in Israel’s history and the most horrific attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust.
The U.S. Department of Treasury says that Iranian support, much of it through its Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, has enabled Hamas’s and associated terrorist activities. This includes the transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars in financial assistance and the furnishing of both weapons and operational training. Raisi is known by the international community as having committed crimes against humanity.
Raisi, who was an Islamic jurist, ran for president in 2017 but lost to moderate incumbent president Hassan Rouhani. Raisi ran for president again in 2021 and won. Wikipedia names him as one of four people on the “prosecution committee” responsible for the execution of thousands of political prisoners in Iran in 1988. Raisi has been sanctioned by the U.S. Office of Foreign Assets Control in accordance with Executive Order 13876 by Donald Trump.
Raisi, 63, was a protégé of Ali Khamenei, who is considered the most powerful political authority in the Islamic Republic.
