Live Updates: Raisi Dies in Crash, Iranian State Media Report
"President Ebrahim Raisi and Iran’s foreign minister were killed in a helicopter crash, leaving the country without two of its most influential figures.
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The deaths of President Ebrahim Raisi and Iran’s foreign minister leave the country without two influential leaders at a particularly tumultuous moment of international tension and domestic discontent, although analysts and regional officials expect little change in Iran’s foreign or domestic policies.
Mr. Raisi, 63, and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian were killed on Sunday in a helicopter crash resulting from a “technical failure,” Iranian state news media reported. They were traveling from Iran’s border with Azerbaijan after inaugurating a dam project when their helicopter went down in a mountainous area near the city of Jolfa. Search and rescue teams scoured a rugged area of dense forest through rain and fog for hours before finding the crash site. There were no survivors.
Video by the Turkish broadcaster Ahaber appears to show mangled debris from the helicopter crash site in a foggy and densely forested area of northwestern Iran. Iranian state media reported that the Bell 212 helicopter went down in a mountainous area on Sunday.
The Kremlin said President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia spoke by phone today with Mohammad Mokhber, Iran’s acting president. The Russian leader had a close relationship with Mokhber’s predecessor, with Iran a key source of weapons for Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine. The two had spoken by phone, by video link or in person at least 17 times in the last two years, according to the Kremlin’s website.
Sources: Satellite imagery from CNES/Airbus via Google Earth; basemap via Mapbox and OpenStreetMap
By The New York Times
After President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran was killed in a helicopter crash, Israeli officials quickly dismissed suggestions that they were behind his death, which Iranian state news media said was the result of “technical failure.”
Analysts said Monday that Israel, despite being one of Iran’s biggest foes, saw little strategic benefit from Mr. Raisi’s death and did not expect Iran to change its posture toward Israel as a result.
When he met his Iranian counterpart on Sunday, President Ilham Aliyev of Azerbaijan toldhim that the day would “go down as a beautiful and bright chapter in the history of Iran-Azerbaijan relations.”
It would be one of the last meetings President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran had before he died.
The helicopter crashed due to a “technical failure,” the IRNA state news agency said in an English-language article paying tribute to Raisi. It appeared to be the first time the cause of the crash was indicated.
Hossein Amir Abdollahian was picked to be Iran’s foreign minister in 2021 by the president, Ebrahim Raisi, during a volatile time for Iran’s regional ties and for its relationship with the West.
Mr. Amir Abdollahian was a career diplomat and, like Mr. Raisi, a hard-liner. The two men died in a helicopter crash on Sunday in a mountainous region of northwestern Iran. Considered closely aligned with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, Mr. Amir Abdollahian was also believed to have had a close relationship with Maj. Gen. Qassim Suleimani, the powerful leader of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force, whom the U.S. killed in a drone strike in 2020.
Pirhossein Kolivand, the head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society, shared details about the search-and-rescue operation in an interview with a state broadcaster. He said the vast search area, heavy fog and darkness slowed the operation, which involved about 2,000 people, all of them Iranian. “After hours of searching, at about 5 a.m., the wreckage of the helicopter was seen by the rescuers from a distance of two kilometers,” Mr. Kolivand said. “It took 40 minutes to an hour to get there.”
Many world leaders shared condolences for Iran on Monday after the deaths of President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian in a helicopter crash on Sunday.
Here is some of the reaction:
With the death of the foreign minister, Hossein Amir Abdollahian, Iran’s Cabinet has appointed one of his deputies, Ali Bagheri Kani, as the ministry’s “caretaker,” the IRNA state news agency reported. Kani has served as Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator and was involved in the 2023 deal that freed imprisoned Americans in exchange for several jailed Iranians and Iranian funds.
With the death of President Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s first vice president, Mohammad Mokhber, becomes acting president. Mr. Mokhber is a conservative political operative with a long history of involvement in large business conglomerates closely tied to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
In a statement on Monday, Mr. Khamenei said that Mr. Mokhber must work with the heads of the legislature and judiciary to hold elections for a new president within 50 days.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, issued a statement offering his condolences and announcing five days of public mourning. He said that the first vice president, Mohammad Mokhber, will take over managing the government in accordance with Iran’s Constitution. Mokhber must work with the heads of the legislature and judiciary to hold elections for a new president within 50 days, Khamenei said.
Raisi’s political rivals, some of whom had vocally criticized his rule, issued statements of condolence, including the grandson of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of Iran’s 1979 Islamic Revolution. “The Islamic Republic of Iran has faced many very difficult situations since its inception and has overcome them,” said the grandson, Hassan Khomeini.
The bodies of President Raisi and Foreign Minister Amir Abdollahian, and those of the others on board the crashed helicopter, were being transferred by ambulance to the city of Tabriz on Monday morning, state television reported. The search and recovery operation has ended, according to the head of Iran’s Red Crescent Society.
Iran will want to project a sense of control and order in the aftermath of President Raisi’s death, and to emphasize that early elections will happen in an orderly way. Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said earlier in remarks about the crash that there would be “no disruption” to the work of the government. He also said that senior officials would remain in control of national security and border security.
President Raisi’s cabinet held an emergency meeting on Monday, leaving his seat at the center of the conference table empty as a symbolic commemoration, photos published by the state news agency IRNA showed. The cabinet issued a statement praising his service to the country and to the Iranian people, and vowing to follow in his footsteps. Mr. Raisi and his conservative government were not popular among the majority of Iranians because they had reinstated oppressive social rules, violently cracked down on dissent and marginalized rival political factions.
President Raisi’s death was announced from the podium of Iran’s most revered Shia shrine, the mausoleum of Imam Reza, in his hometown of Mashhad. A large crowd of government supporters had gathered there overnight to hold a prayer vigil. People broke into loud shrieks and wails when the announcement was made.
IRNA, the government’s state news agency, also announced the death of President Raisi, the foreign minister and everyone else on board the helicopter. It said he had been “martyred in the line of service.”
Tasnim News Agency, affiliated with Iran’s Revolutionary Guards, published a statement saying that President Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian had been killed in the helicopter crash. It published a photo of Mr. Raisi with a headline that called him a martyr. Tasnim also said that the governor of East Azerbaijan Province, an Imam and two senior military officials who were in charge of Mr. Raisi’s security had died in the crash, along with the pilot and the co-pilot.
Iranians are waking up to news that rescue teams have reached the site where the president’s helicopter crashed on Sunday. Officials and journalists at the site are telling the state news media that there is no sign of survivors. The government has not yet made an official statement announcing the death of the president, the foreign minister and others who were traveling on the helicopter.
Initial photos and footage of the crash site posted on Iranian news sites showed debris and broken helicopter parts. In addition to the president and foreign minister, a cleric and the governor of the eastern province of Azerbaijan were among the officials on board the helicopter.
“Finding the location of the helicopter and seeing the scene there is no sign of any of the passengers being alive,” the head of Iran’s Red Crescent Society, Pirhossien Koulivand, who was at the site, told state television.
The head of Iran’s Red Crescent Society, Pirhossein Kolivand, told state TV that search and rescue teams have not located the site of the helicopter crash after more than 10 hours of looking, and have made no contact with anyone on board. Any rumors to the contrary were false, he said. Kolivand said rescuers were using their best guesses to set the search area and had no confirmation of the exact location of the missing helicopter.
Even before the announcement on Monday that President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran had died in a helicopter crash, relations between Tehran and the United States had come perilously close to open conflict. What unfolds in the next few days — including what Iran declares was the cause of the crash — could well determine whether the two countries are able to grope their way out of several simultaneous crises.
Over the long term, the struggle that matters most is the one that centers on Iran’s nuclear program. The program had largely been contained after the Obama administration negotiated a nuclear deal with Iran in 2015. But President Donald J. Trump denounced and abandoned the deal six years ago, and eventually Iran resumed production of nuclear fuel — enriched to a level just short of what would be needed to produce several bombs.
Supporters of the government flocked to religious shrines for group prayers, and in Tehran’s Vali Asr square about 50 people held a vigil with a speaker urging national unity. But the government’s critics were far from sympathetic, with many on social media highlighting the brutality of Raisi’s leadership, including violent crackdowns on dissent during his time as judicial chief and president.
The crash of a helicopter carrying President Ebrahim Raisi of Iran could hardly have come at a more volatile time for the Islamic Republic.
Sunday’s episode left the fate of Mr. Raisi — who many analysts believed was being groomed to become Iran’s next supreme leader — uncertain against a backdrop of economic misery, widespread public discontent and geopolitical tensions that had pushed Israel and Iran to exchange rare direct attacks.
United Nations spokesman Stéphane Dujarric said that Secretary General António Guterres was closely following the news of the helicopter crash. “The secretary general is following reports of an incident with Iranian President Raisi’s aircraft with concern," he said in a statement. “He hopes for the safety of the president and his entourage.”
Ali Bahaador Jahromi, an Iranian government spokesman, wrote on social media late Sunday that there was no new information on what he called a “difficult and complicated situation.” He said the “geographical location of the accident and weather” had delayed updates on the crash.
A number of countries were quick to offer assistance to Iran to help with search and rescue operations after a helicopter carrying its president, Ebrahim Raisi, crashed on Sunday.
Turkey’s Ministry of Defense said it had dispatched a domestically produced combat drone and a Cougar helicopter with night vision compatibility to assist the search and rescue effort, at Iran’s request. A total of 32 rescuers and six vehicles were sent to aid in the search, with more on standby, according to the Turkish national emergency agency.
Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has given his first public statement about the crash. “We hope that benevolent God returns our dear and honorable president and all with him to the arms of the people,” he said. “Everyone must pray for the health of these public servants. The people of Iran must not be anxious or worried.”
In an address carried live on state television, he said that all of the country’s security and governance will be handled by other officials and there will be no disruption to border security or national security.
The European Union has activated its Copernicus satellite system to offer emergency mapping services to help Iranian officials gain better visibility of the area where the crash is believed to have occurred, according to the bloc’s chief for crisis management, Janez Lenarcic. He said the E.U. had done so after a request for assistance by Iran.
Ilham Aliyev, the president of Azerbaijan, had met with Raisi earlier today. He wrote on X that he was “profoundly troubled” to learn about the crash “after bidding a friendly farewell” to the Iranian president. Pakistan’s prime minister, Shehbaz Sharif, said on X that he was “waiting with great anxiety for good news.”
The U.S. State Department said it was “closely following” reports of the crash but had no further comment.
Videos posted to Instagram by the Iranian Red Crescent Society showed rescue teams earlier today trekking through fog and difficult terrain in search of the crash site.
Prime Minister Mohammed Shia al-Sudani of Iraq has instructed his country’s interior ministry and other relevant parties to offer to help with the search for President Raisi’s helicopter, according to Bassem al-Awadi, a spokesman for the Iraqi government.
State media reported that Brig. General Mohammad Bagheri, the head of the country's Armed Forces, said the army and the Revolutionary Guards had been deployed to the area of the crash.
Iran’s Red Crescent said it has lost contact with three members of the search and rescue teams because of bad weather and the thick fog, state television reported.
Before the crash, Raisi had attended a ceremony to open a joint dam project on Iran’s northwestern border, the IRNA state news agency reported. While there, he also expressed support for the Palestinian people. “The Palestine issue is the most important issue of the Islamic world,” he said, according to IRNA.
Members of Iran’s Supreme National Security Committee and senior officials from the government have traveled to Tabriz, the closest major city to the site of the accident, state media reported.
State television is urging the public to pray for the safety of Raisi and his delegation, and the president's official website also posted a message requesting prayers.
The Iranian government has canceled a planned cabinet meeting and convened an emergency meeting with the country’s crisis management committee, state media reported.
Videos airing on Iranian state television show rescue teams driving along mountain roads in very thick fog and teams walking on green hills wearing the red and white vests of emergency teams. Rescue dogs are also being dispatched, according to state media."
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