DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Rescue teams on Monday found a helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisithe country’s foreign minister and other officials who had apparently fallen in the mountains of northwestern Iran the previous day, although “no signs of life” were detected, state media reported.
At sunrise on Monday, rescuers spotted the helicopter at a distance of about 2 kilometers (1.25 miles), the head of the Iranian Red Crescent Society, Pir Hossein Kolivand, told state media. He did not give further details and the employees had been missing for more than 12 hours.
The incident occurs as Iran under Raisi and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei launched an unprecedented drone and missile attack against Israel last month and enriched uranium closer to weapons-grade levels than ever before.
Iran has also faced years of mass protests against its Shiite theocracy over a struggling economy and women’s rights – making the time much more sensitive for Tehran and the country’s future as the Israel-Hamas war ignites. the wider Middle East.
Raisi was traveling in the Iranian province of East Azerbaijan. State TV said what it called a “forced landing” happened near Jolfa, a town on the border with Azerbaijan, about 600 kilometers (375 miles) northwest of the Iranian capital, Tehran. Later, state television placed it further east, near the village of Uzi, but the details remained contradictory.
With Raisi were Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, the governor of Iran’s East Azerbaijan province and other officials and bodyguards, state news agency IRNA reported. One local government official used the word “accident,” but others referred to a “forced landing” or an “incident.”
On Monday morning, Turkish authorities released what they described as drone footage showing what appeared to be a desert fire, which they “suspected to be helicopter debris.” Coordinates listed in the footage place the fire about 20 kilometers (12 miles) south of the Azerbaijan-Iran border, on the side of a steep mountain.
Images released by IRNA on Monday morning showed what the agency described as the crash site, across a steep valley in a lush green mountain range. Soldiers speaking the local Azeri language said: “There it is, we found it.”
Shortly afterwards, state TV, in scrolling text on the screen, said: “There is no live broadcast signal from people on board.” It gave no further details, but the semi-official Tasnim news agency showed rescue workers using a small drone to fly over the site, with them talking to each other and saying the same thing.
Hardliners urged the public to pray. State TV broadcast images of hundreds of worshipers, some with their hands outstretched in supplication, praying at the Imam Reza Shrine in the city of Mashhad, one of the holiest sites in Shiite Islam, as well as in Qom and other places in the country. The main state television channel broadcast the prayers non-stop.
In Tehran, a group of men kneeling on the side of the street held strands of prayer beads and watched a video of Raisi praying, some of them visibly crying.
“If anything happens to him, we will be heartbroken,” said one of the men, Mehdi Seyedi. “May the prayers work and may he return to the arms of the nation safe and sound.”
IRNA called the area a “forest” and the region is also known for being mountainous. State TV broadcast images of SUVs racing through a wooded area and said they were being hampered by poor weather conditions, including heavy rain and winds. Rescue teams could be seen walking through the fog.
Khamenei himself also asked the public to pray.
“We hope that Almighty God returns the dear president and his colleagues in full health to the arms of the nation,” said Khamenei, eliciting an “amen” from the faithful he was addressing.
However, the supreme leader also stressed that the Iranian government’s business would continue regardless of what happened. According to the Iranian constitution, Iran’s first vice president assumes power if the president dies with Khamenei’s consent, and a new presidential election would be called within 50 days. First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber had already started receiving calls from foreign officials and governments in Raisi’s absence, state media reported.
Raisi, 63, a hard-liner who previously led the country’s judiciary, is seen as a protégé of Khamenei and some analysts have suggested he could replace the 85-year-old leader upon Khamenei’s death or resignation.
Raisi was at the border with Azerbaijan on Sunday to inaugurate a dam with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. The dam is the third that the two nations have built on the Aras River. The visit took place despite cold relations between the two nations, including an armed attack on the Azerbaijani Embassy in Tehran in 2023, and Azerbaijan’s diplomatic relations with Israel, which Iran’s Shiite theocracy views as its main enemy in the region.
Iran operates several helicopters in the country, but international sanctions make it difficult to obtain parts for them. Its military air fleet also largely dates back to before the 1979 Islamic Revolution. IRNA published images that it described as Raisi taking off in what looked like a Bell helicopter, with a blue and white paint scheme previously seen in published photographs.
Raisi won Iran’s 2021 presidential election, a vote that had the lowest participation in the history of the Islamic Republic. Raisi is sanctioned by the US in part because of his involvement in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 at the end of the bloody Iran-Iraq war.
Under Raisi, Iran now enriches uranium to near weapons-grade levels and hampers international inspections. Iran armed Russia in its war against Ukraine, as well as launching a massive drone and missile attack against Israel in the midst of its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. It also continued to arm proxy groups in the Middle East, such as Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Meanwhile, mass protests in the country have been going on for years. The most recent involved the 2022 death of Mahsa Amini, a woman who had previously been detained for allegedly not wearing a hijab, or headscarf, to the authorities’ liking. The months-long security crackdown that followed the demonstrations killed more than 500 people and resulted in the detention of more than 22,000.
In March, a United Nations investigative panel concluded that Iran was responsible for the “physical violence” that led to Amini’s death.
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Associated Press writers Nasser Karimi in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.
