A helicopter carrying Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi takes off near the Iran-Azerbaijan border on May 19.Ali Hamed Haghdoust/WANA News Agency via REUTERS
The death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi portends a period of turbulence in a country that has made itself central to multiple conflicts across the Middle East.
Mr. Raisi, a hard-liner who has helped lead Iran into deeper confrontation with both Israel and the West since his 2021 election, was the subject of a desperate search on Sunday after his helicopter disappeared shortly after taking off, after a meeting with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev at the border between the two countries.
Videos from the area in northwestern Iran where Mr. Raisi’s helicopter made what Iranian state media called a “hard landing” showed thick fog hanging over densely forested mountains. Visibility was so poor that the Iranian Red Crescent said it had lost contact with three of its own rescuers during the 65-team effort to reach the crash site. As night fell in Iran, state media urged Iranians to pray for Mr. Raisi.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian was reported to have been on the same helicopter, along with other senior officials and religious figures. The helicopter was one of three that travelled in a convoy to the Azerbaijani border to mark the opening of a dam on the Aras River that divides the two countries.
The dam project was part of an effort to improve ties between Iran and Azerbaijan, which have been strained by Azerbaijan’s close relationship with Israel.
If images shown on Iranian state media were accurate, Mr. Raisi was flying aboard a U.S.-made Bell 212 helicopter, which would likely have been purchased before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. Western sanctions against Iran have made it difficult for the regime to buy new parts for its aging fleet of helicopters.
Mr. Raisi’s death will upend Iranian politics not only in the short term – with First Vice-President Mohammad Mokhber stepping up on a temporary basis until a successor is chosen – but also for decades to come. Mr. Raisi was viewed as the leading candidate to succeed the country’s 85-year-old Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“Raisi’s death will add to the leadership chaos in the Islamic Republic,” said Masih Alinejad, an Iranian-born journalist and women’s-rights activist now living in the United States. With Mr. Raisi out of the picture, she said, “there is no clear candidate to replace Khamenei.”
The ayatollah himself took to social media to try to broadcast an image of stability.
“Everyone should pray for the health of these people who are serving the Iranian nation,” he posted via his verified account on X. “The nation doesn’t need to be worried or anxious as the administration of the country will not be disrupted at all.”
Mr. Raisi’s death will also have an unpredictable impact on the conflict raging across the broader Middle East. The White House said U.S. President Joe Biden was briefed on the situation on Sunday.
Iran is the main foreign backer of Hamas, the Islamist militia that has been at war with Israel since the Oct. 7 attack, with fighting that has reportedly killed more than 35,000 Palestinians and 1,400 Israelis. Tehran also funds militias in Lebanon, Iraq and Yemen that have helped destabilize all three countries in recent years. Those proxy forces have also launched strikes on Israel during the war in Gaza.
Iran and Israel have traded unprecedented direct blows in recent months. Israel launched an April 1 air strike that struck an Iranian diplomatic compound in the Syrian capital of Damascus, killing 18 people, including eight members of Iran’s elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Iran retaliated 12 days later by firing more than 300 missiles and drones at Israel, though the large majority were shot down by Israel, the U.S., Jordan and other countries before they reached their intended targets.
Iranian state media largely referred to the helicopter crash on Sunday as an “incident” – rather than an accident – leaving open the possibility that Tehran would accuse Israel or the United States of playing some kind of role in what happened.
The 63-year-old Mr. Raisi was an arch-conservative notorious among liberal Iranians for the role he played as Tehran’s deputy prosecutor and a member of the four-person “Death Commission,” in the mass execution of thousands of political dissidents in 1988. His election in 2021 was marred by the lowest turnout in the history of the Islamic Republic, after most of Mr. Raisi’s main rivals were barred from running.
In 2022, when protesters took to the streets of Tehran and other cities after the death of Mahsa Amini – a 22-year-old woman who had been jailed for wearing her head scarf too loosely – Mr. Raisi’s regime again cracked down hard, and hundreds of protesters were killed.
Reaction to his disappearance was fiercely divided on Sunday. While Iranian state television showed images of people gathering in mosques to pray for Mr. Raisi’s health, others were celebrating the possibility that one of the regime’s hard-liners was gone. Ms. Alinejad said she had been sent a video of “celebratory fireworks lighting up the sky in Iran after the helicopter crash.” She said that Iranian social media was “flooded with jokes” about the crash.
Iraj Mesdaghi, a former political prisoner who was interrogated four times by the Death Commission in 1988, told The Globe and Mail in an exchange of messages that he was not among those celebrating the possible end of Mr. Raisi.
“I would prefer that we could try him for the crimes he has committed in the last 44 years.”