Iran now faces a period of domestic political uncertainty. The ultra-conservative Raisi was considered the favorite to succeed spiritual leader Ayatollah Khamenei. As the actual number one at the top of Iran, the 85-year-old Khamenei temporarily handed over leadership of the state to Raisi’s previous deputy, 68-year-old Mohammed Mochber, on Monday.
An interim foreign minister was also appointed after incumbent Hossein Amir-Abdollahian died in the crash along with Raisi: the previous chief nuclear negotiator Ali Bagheri became the country’s new chief diplomat on an interim basis, as a government spokesman announced. The 56-year-old Bagheri served as deputy foreign minister under Amir-Abdollahian.
The heads of the government, parliament and judiciary set June 28th as the date for the presidential election, state television reported. There were initially no signs of a candidate for the presidency.
The funeral ceremonies are scheduled to begin on Tuesday, and thousands of mourners gathered in a central square in Tehran on Monday. According to the state news agency Irna, a mourning ceremony for Raisi and his companions will take place on Tuesday morning in Tabriz in the northwest of the country, where their bodies had been brought from the mountainous crash area. A funeral procession will take place in Tehran on Wednesday, followed by a ceremony in Raisi’s hometown of Mashchad on Thursday.
The Iranian army’s chief of general staff ordered an investigation into the cause of the crash, according to Iranian media reports. The state television station Irib had previously reported that the helicopter crashed into a mountain in rain and thick fog and crashed.
The government in Tehran confirmed Raisi’s death on Monday morning after hours of uncertainty. There were no survivors in the crash of the Bell 212 helicopter; in addition to Raisi and the Foreign Minister, seven other people died.
The presidential helicopter went missing on Sunday afternoon in thick fog and rain in a mountainous area near Jolfa in the Iranian province of East Azerbaijan. Raisi had previously inaugurated a dam project in the border region together with Azerbaijani President Ilhan Aliyev.
On the return flight, only two of the three helicopters in the presidential fleet landed in the city of Tabriz. A huge search and rescue operation followed in bad weather and fog. Numerous foreign governments offered support and the EU provided satellite data. According to the Foreign Ministry in Washington, Iran even asked the USA for help, but they were unable to help “for logistical reasons”.
It wasn’t until sunrise on Monday that rescue workers finally reported the discovery of the destroyed helicopter in the impassable terrain. The nine bodies were brought out of the forest on stretchers, state television showed.
The ultra-conservative Raisi has been President of Iran since 2021. During his term in office, the country experienced mass protests triggered by the death of the young Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in September 2022, an economic crisis exacerbated by US sanctions and a dangerous confrontation with arch-enemy Israel, in which Tehran fired hundreds of drones and missiles for the first time in April fired at Israel from its territory.
Numerous countries, as well as militant pro-Iranian groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, expressed their condolences on Monday. Russian President Vladimir Putin praised Raisi as an “outstanding” politician; according to the Kremlin, he spoke on the phone with the new interim president and both “underlined their will to further strengthen cooperation.”
China’s head of state Xi Jinping spoke of a “great loss for the Iranian people”. The USA sent its “official condolences”, while the White House stressed that “a lot of blood” was on Raisi’s hands. National Security Council spokesman John Kirby said Raisi was responsible for “terrible” human rights violations in Iran and supported the radical Islamic Hamas group, for example.
EU Council President Charles Michel expressed his “sincere condolences,” as did EU Foreign Affairs Representative Josep Borrell and NATO. The UN Security Council observed a minute’s silence.