This is the saddest part of the crash that Iranian media reports President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian were among the top officials killed in a helicopter crash today. The accident happened while the plane was flying through the fog in the area of East Azerbaijan province in the northwestern mountains of Iran.
In addition to the President and the Foreign Minister, other prominent figures also lost their lives in the crash – Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Al-e Hashem, who was the imam of Friday prayers in Tabriz, General Malek Rahmati – the governor of the East Azerbaijan province. Sardar Seyed Mehdi Mousavi, the commander of the president’s protection unit, also lost his life in the incident of the tragic accident.
Amir-Abdollahian was a conservative politician known for his extremely negative attitude towards Israel and, generally, Western countries. He was appointed as the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Iran just after Raisi was elected President of Iran in August 2021. He tried to play a balancing act as the top Iranian diplomat by reaching out to Arab countries, including the Saudi kingdom itself.
Iranian Red Crescent has officially said that there were no survivors from the crash and that the bodies of the victims have been retrieved from the crashed plane. The death of these huge personalities has disappointed not only Iran but the whole world because of the gap they have created in Iran’s leadership and diplomatic segment.
On this sad occasion, people are grieving, and legal officials are trying to find all the information that can tell about the reasons for the crash.
