Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, a hardline diplomat, dies in helicopter crash

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates (AP) — Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, a hardliner close to the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard who has confronted the West while also overseeing indirect negotiations with the U.S. over the country’s nuclear program, he died in the helicopter crash which also killed the country’s president, state media reported on Monday. He was 60 years old.

Amirabdollahian represented the hard-line shift in Iran following the collapse of Tehran’s nuclear deal with world powers, following then-U.S. President donald trump unilaterally withdrew America from the agreement. He served under President Ebrahim Raisia protégé of the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khameneiand followed his policies.

However, Amirabdollahian was also involved in efforts to reach détente with regional rival Saudi Arabia in 2023, a move eclipsed months later by tensions that arose during the Israel-Hamas war. But he remained close to the country’s paramilitary Revolutionary Guard, once praising the late General Qassem Soleimani, who was killed in a US drone strike in Baghdad in 2020.

“You should thank the Islamic Republic and Qassem Soleimani because Soleimani contributed to world peace and security,” Amirabdollahian once said. “If the Islamic Republic did not exist, its metro stations and gathering centers in Brussels, London and Paris would not be safe.”

Amirabdollahian served in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs under Ali Akbar Salehi from 2011 to 2013. He then returned for several years under the command of the Minister of Foreign Affairs. Mohammad Javad Zarifwho was a key player in the nuclear deal reached under the administration of relatively moderate President Hassan Rouhani.

But Zarif and Amirabdollahian had a falling out, likely due to internal differences in Iran’s foreign policy. Zarif offered him the position of ambassador to Oman, still a strategically important position given the sultanate has long served as an interlocutor between Iran and the Western. But Amirabdollahian refused.

He became foreign minister under Raisi with his election in 2021. He supported the Iranian government’s position even as mass protests swept the country in 2022 following the death of Mahsa Amini, a woman who had previously been detained for allegedly not wear a hijab, or headscarf, to the liking of the authorities. 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.

During the Israel-Hamas war, he met with foreign officials and the leader of Hamas. He also threatened retaliation against Israel and praised the attack on Israel in April. He also oversaw Iran’s response to a brief exchange of airstrikes with Pakistan, Iran’s nuclear-armed neighbor, and worked on diplomacy with the Taliban in Afghanistan, with whom Iran had tense relations.

Amirabdollhian leaves behind a wife and two children.

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Associated Press writer Amir Vahdat in Tehran, Iran, contributed to this report.