Tens of thousands of people gathered in the northwestern Iranian city of Tabriz on Tuesday to bid farewell to the President Ebrahim Raisi and seven other members of his entourage, including Iranian Foreign Minister Amir Abdollahian, killed on Sunday in a helicopter crash that continues to spark all sorts of questions and speculation.
Waving Iranian flags and portraits of Rasi, the funeral procession paraded through the streets of downtown Tabriz, where the Iranian president was headed when his helicopter crashed amid dense fog in a mountainous area near the border with Azerbaijan, where the Iranian leader had attended with Ilham Aliyev the inauguration of a joint dam project on the Aras River, which marks the border between the two countries. The search and rescue operation, in which an Akıncı drone equipped with night vision sent by Turkey was absolutely crucial, culminated in the discovery of the wreckage early Monday morning, with no survivors.
A few hours later, Iran’s state television announced Raisi’s death, saying that “the servant of the Iranian nation, Ayatollah Ebrahim Raisi, has reached the highest level of martyrdom“, while showing portraits of the deceased and reciting verses from the Koran. Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, has declared five days of mourning and appointed Vice President Mohammad Mokhber as his replacement until presidential elections are held on 28 June.
The head of Iran’s armed forces, General Mohammad Bagheri, has ordered an investigation into the causes of the crash, which still raises many questions. While some prominent figures in Iran have not hesitated to point the finger at the US or Israel as the perpetrators, experts question why an old Bell Huey 412, a US-made helicopter with maintenance problems due to sanctions against Tehran and over 30 years old, unable to fly at night or in low visibility conditions and not equipped to fly over mountainous regions, was assigned to transport the Iranian president, instead of the Russian-made Mi-171s used by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard.
After the funeral in Tabriz, which will then be transferred to the Shiite holy city of Qom and then to Tehran on Wednesday, Raisi’s body will be taken to his hometown of Mashhad, in the north-east of the country, where he will be buried. Ebrahim Raisi, 63, had been in office since 2021 after succeeding the moderate Hassan Rouhani; considered an ultraconservative, under his rule the country’s economic crisis and tensions with Israel worsened, and there were violent protests against the ayatollahs’ regime over the death of Mahsa Amini, a 22-year-old woman beaten to death by the morality police for not covering her hair properly.
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Edited and reviewed by:
Pablo Gómez is a specialist in Turkey and has been editor-in-chief of Hispanatolia since 2011. He has been analysing current affairs and geopolitics in Turkey and the surrounding region since 2006.
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