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-WVq2LzPFm9.jpg "President Ebrahim Raisi")
President Ebrahim Raisi died on Monday after his helicopter crashed in a mountainous region of the country, Iranian state media said.
Rescue teams had been scouring the area since Sunday afternoon after a helicopter carrying Raisi, the foreign minister and other officials had gone missing.
Early Monday, relief workers located the missing helicopter, with state TV saying the president had died.
Iran’s vice president for executive affairs Mohsen Mansouri posted on X a Koranic verse used to express condolences.
Fears had been growing for the 63-year-old ultraconservative after contact was lost with the helicopter carrying him as well as Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and others in East Azerbaijan province on Sunday.
A total of nine people were on board the aircraft, according to Tasnim news agency.
Iran’s Red Crescent chief Pirhossein Koolivand said rescue teams headed towards the site of the crash after locating the aircraft.
Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi said the helicopter “made a hard landing” in bad weather.
Expressions of concern and offers of help came from abroad, including Iraq, Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Russia, China and Turkey, as well as from the European Union which activated its rapid response mapping service to aid in the search effort.
Raisi had visited the northwestern province to inaugurate a dam project together with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev, on their common border.
Aliyev said in a post on X that “we were profoundly troubled by the news of a helicopter carrying the top delegation crash-landing in Iran”.
A US State Department spokesman said: “We are closely following reports of a possible hard landing of a helicopter in Iran carrying the Iranian president and foreign minister”, adding that “we have no further comment at this time”.
Raisi has been president since 2021 when he succeeded the moderate Hassan Rouhani, at a time when the economy was battered by US sanctions over Iran’s contested nuclear programme.
Iran vice president to replace Raisi ahead of election
Following the death of Raisi, Iran’s first vice president, Mohammad Mokhber, is expected to assume the presidency after Ebrahim Raisi’s death in a helicopter crash as the country gears up for early elections.
The Iranian constitution stipulates that the first vice president take over “in the event of the president’s death, dismissal, resignation, absence or illness for more than two months”.
Raisi, who died on Sunday along with Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and other officials, was nearing the end of his first four-year term as president.
Mokhber’s interim appointment requires the approval of Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has the final word in all state affairs.
The vice president was born in Dezful city in the southwestern province of Khuzestan, where he held several official positions.
For years since 2007, Mokhber chaired the Execution of Imam Khomeini’s Order, a governmental organisation tasked with managing properties confiscated following the 1979 Islamic revolution.
