Rescue teams are attempting to locate Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi after his helicopter made an emergency landing on the way in which back from a visit to the northwest of the country.
There was thick fog within the region, making conditions difficult for search parties, state media said, without giving a direct cause for Sunday’s incident.
Finding the president’s helicopter “could take some time due to difficult weather conditions,” Interior Minister Ahmad Vahidi said on television. An aerial search was “impossible,” Iranian television said.
Raisi, an ultra-conservative cleric in his 60s who won Iran’s 2021 presidential election, is taken into account the favourite to succeed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the Islamic Republic’s top authority.
The incident comes at a time of great unrest within the Middle East over the Gaza war between Israel and the Iranian-backed Hamas. It has brought Iran and Israel near full-scale conflict and led other Tehran-backed groups, including the Houthis in Yemen and Shiite militias in Iraq, to attack U.S. bases and merchant ships within the Red Sea.
Raisi’s air fleet consisted of three helicopters carrying senior officials, including Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, the semi-official Tasnim news agency reported. Amirabdollahian was believed to be on board Raisi’s plane on the time.
State television broadcast live footage from the country’s holy shrine within the northeastern city of Mashhad, Raisi’s birthplace, and showed pilgrims praying for Raisi. Also on board Raisi’s helicopter were the governor of East Azerbaijan province and the Supreme Leader’s representative in town of Tabriz, in accordance with Iranian media.
Both Raisi and Amirabdollahian oversaw the restoration of Iran’s diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia through a China-brokered deal announced in March 2023. But it was also a time when there was a stalemate in negotiations over reviving Iran’s nuclear cope with world powers and boosting economic sanctions.
Early Sunday, Raisi met his Azerbaijani counterpart Ilham Aliyev to inaugurate a jointly developed dam on the border between the 2 countries. The incident occurred when Raisi was coming back from Iran’s East Azerbaijan province.
Raisi’s ascension to the presidency got here after eight years under the relatively moderate Hassan Rouhani, who played a central role within the nuclear deal from which former President Donald Trump withdrew the United States in 2018.
The US withdrawal from the agreement strengthened the hardliners in Iran, who were all the time critical of the agreement. Raisi was sanctioned in 2019 by the Trump administration, which cited his role in a deadly crackdown on protesters a decade ago over election fraud.
During his presidential campaign, he received support from the best levels of Iran’s religious and military establishment and placed all of Iran’s state institutions and levers of power within the hands of hardliners.
Raisi’s first vice chairman is Mohammad Mokhber, who has represented Iran on recent foreign trips and to whom he, like many senior Iranian officials, reports US sanctions.
