Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, a hard-liner who was seen as a potential successor to the country’s aging supreme leader, died in a helicopter crash, Iranian state media reported on Monday.
Iranian state-run media announced Raisi’s death in a post on Monday, along with the deaths of Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian and other government officials who were aboard the helicopter.
State-run media gave no immediate cause for the crash. However, the helicopter the group was traveling in crashed in foggy conditions in a mountainous area in the northwest of the country near the border with Azerbaijan. Raisi had taken part in a ceremony to inaugurate a dam with the president of Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev.Bad weather hindered rescuers in their attempts to find the downed helicopter.
As the son of a cleric from Iran’s second-largest city, Mashhad, Raisi attended a seminary school from the age of 15 and took part in protests against the Western-backed Shah of Iran, who was toppled in the 1979 revolution that installed the theocratic regime under Ayatollah Ruh Olla H Khomeini.
Before becoming president in 2021, the ultraconservative had been the head of the judiciary.A year after assuming the presidency, he ordered a crackdown on women’s dress codes. That led to the arrest of a young Kurdish woman, Mahsa Amini, whose headscarf had not properly covered her hair, in line with the country’s “hijab and chastity” law. Amini’s death in custody sparked nationwide protests that resulted in hundreds of deaths, according to human rights groups, and were seen as one of the most serious threats to the Islamic regime since it came to power in the 1979 revolution.
Since those protests died down, the regime has recently launched a new crackdown on women’s dress codes, which human rights group Amnesty International has described as a “war on women.”
He could have become the supreme leaderAsAs a protege of Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, Raisi had been seen as a potential successor for the top position, along with Khamenei’s son Mojtaba.Wilson Center distinguished fellow Robin Wright, who has interviewed the last six presidents of Iran, said Raisi was expected to be reelected to a second term as president and oversee the transition process of a new supreme leader — if not assume the role himself.
“What makes his death particularly important is not about government today, but about the transition process with an aged and ailing supreme leader who will inevitably die in the next few years,” Wright told NPR’s Morning Edition.Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi death today
During his tenure as president, Raisi also strengthened Iran’s ties with China and Russia and openly blasted the U.S. government after it killed Iranian Maj. Gen. Qassem Soleimani in an airstrike in 2020, Wright added.
“He was really the most hard-line president since the 1979 revolution,” she said.
Raisi was known for his part in 1988 extrajudicial killings
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