The helicopter crash that killed Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and seven others in May was caused by difficult meteorological and atmospheric circumstances, Iranian state TV claimed Sunday.
According to state TV, according to the final assessment of the Supreme Board of the General Staff of the Armed Forces, the helicopter crash was caused mainly by the region’s challenging weather circumstances in spring. The report also mentioned the unexpected emergence of a dense fog rising upwards as the helicopter slammed into the mountain.
According to the assessment, there were no indications of sabotage in parts or systems. Raisi and seven others, including Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, 60, were killed in an accident in a remote mountainous area of northwestern Iran. At the time of the crash, Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency said that the helicopter was also carrying the governor of East Azerbaijan province, as well as other officials and bodyguards. Turkish authorities published drone video of a heat signature at a place in the forest that they “suspected to be helicopter wreckage.” The video’s coordinates show the fire around 12 miles south of the Azerbaijan-Iranian border, on the slope of a high, forested mountain.
Raisi, a hardliner, had been seen as a protégé of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and some experts believed he could even succeed the octogenarian supreme leader if he died or stepped down. He was Iran’s second president to die in office. President Mohammad Ali Rajai was assassinated by a bomb blast in 1981, during the turbulent days following the revolution.
