Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country’s foreign minister and several other officials were found dead on Monday, hours after their helicopter crashed, state media reported.
BREAKING: He’s Dead - The President of the Islamic Republic Killed In Helicopter Crash
President Ebrahim Raisi, known as the ‘butcher of Tehran’, was killed in a helicopter crash on the way back from Azerbaijan. — Yasser Ali #Iran#IslamicRepublic#MiddleEast
A helicopter carrying President #EbrahimRaisi of #Iran & his foreign minister crashed on Sunday in the country’s mountainous northwest, acc/to state media, deepening the turmoil that has gripped the nation on both the international & domestic fronts in recent months.
#Raisi, 63, was traveling from Iran’s border w/ Azerbaijan to inaugurate a joint dam project.
The helicopter, carrying #Raisi & #Iran’s Foreign Minister Hossein Amir #Abdollahian, state media reported, crashed near the city of Varzaghan around 1PM local time, in bad weather & thick fog.
Search & rescue teams scoured an area of tall mountains & dense forest through rain & fog for >10 hrs. At one point the authorities called off the aerial search because of the weather, dispatching on foot soldiers, elite commandos of the Revolutionary Guards & 40 rescue teams….
Even well into the night, state media had not yet reported on casualties, or on the condition of the president or anyone else aboard. The cause of the crash was also unknown.
“There will be no disruption in the country’s operation,” Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali #Khamenei said in an address on state TV. “Senior officials are doing their work & I have advised them on the necessary points & all of the country’s operation will carry on smoothly & orderly.”
#Raisi, a conservative who violently crushed dissent is widely viewed as a possible successor to the SupremeLeader. The uncertainty over his fate comes during a particularly tumultuous period for #Iran.
Its long shadow war w/ #Israel burst into the open after #Hamas attacked Israel on Oct. 7, setting off the war in #Gaza & a cascade of strikes & counterstrikes across the region.
#Raisi is a hard-line religious cleric who came of age during the #Islamic revolution. Under #Iran’s #theocracy, Raisi, as president, is the 2nd most powerful individual in Iran’s #political structure after… #Khamenei.
After becoming president in 2021, Raisi consolidated power & marginalized reformists who wanted to defuse tensions w/the #West. He repeatedly said he pursued a policy of “strong diplomacy,” forging closer #economic & #security ties w/ #Russia & #China.
An airstrike kills 27 people, mostly women and children, in central Gaza as Israel’s increasingly divided leadership debates who should govern the territory after the war, now in its eighth month. AP reports: https://flip.it/E.DkW9 #News#WorldNews#MiddleEast#Israel#Gaza
40 Rapid Response Teams Deployed in Area: #IRCS Chief
The head of #Iranian Red Crescent Society Pir Hossein Kolivand stated that 40 rapid response teams from the #IRCS are currently conducting search operations in the location where accident happened for the helicopter carrying President #Raisi and his companions ⏩
Today #Russia and #China play best friends forever and #USSR had been traditionally placed in the same “communist” basked as China. Some fun facts that especially tankies are getting completely wrong today.^1
Since 1950’s China and USSR were actually conflicted over each other’s interpretations of #Marxism and in 1960’s the conflict nearly escalated into a full-scale nuclear war between the two countries.
China criticised CPSU (Communist Party of Soviet Union) over Soviet invasion of #Czechoslovakia (1968)^2 and “Brezhnev Doctrine” which denounced any Marxism version outside of the Soviet one as “reactionary” (Marxist newspeak for “heresy”). This included both Czechoslovak reforms and Mao’s Cultural Revolution in equal manner. At that time China actually developed complex relations with Eastern Bloc countries such as Romania and Czechoslovakia behind Kremlin’s back.
Essentially, everyone called each other “reactionary” and claimed their Marxism is the correct one. Any resemblance to past religious wars is entirely incidental. 😉 In 1968 Chinese diplomat Zhou Enlai speaking in Romanian embassy in Beijing called Soviets for “fascist politics, great power chauvinism, national egoism and social imperialism”.^3
Does that ring any bells? 😉
Soviets and China had a number of unresolved border issues in Manchuria. In 1968 China started escalating these, actually killing Soviet border guards. Moscow, knowing of China’s nuclear weapons and Mao’s confrontative attitude preferred to deescalate… which only encouraged Chinese.
Does that remind anything from contemporary history? 😉
At the peak of the conflict in 1969 USSR found itself in the position of a country with high-tech army challenged by a low-tech army which relied on millions of conscripts and human wave tactics.
Does this ring any bells? 😉
In 1969 Soviet army managed to push back overwhelming several Chinese offensives near the island of Zhenbao in spite of their overwhelming numbers with ratios up to 1:10 Soviet to Chinese. That was possible primarily due to the technical advantage, such as then-advanced T-62 tanks.
A ceasefire was signed in 1969 - on Chinese side by the very same Zhou Enlai who called Soviets “fascists” only a year before, but the actual peace agreement was only signed in 1991. The conflict was only completely resolved in 2008 (!) when Russia ceded 340 km² of the disputed lands to China.
As you can see, contrary to the mythology carefully constructed by modern “geopolitical realists”, there’s nothing constant in Russian or Soviet policies. Russia can not always win armed conflicts, it can cede territories and in general conflicts can be won in spite of imbalance of power. Oh, and calling others “fascists” was used by everyone and Russia was both an user and a recipient of this nomination.
Remembering the ethnic cleansing, massacres and Zionist terrorism that lead to the creation of #Israel which remains to this day a pariah state and a plague on the Middle East and the world.
After 75 years of failure, one would imagine that a people would learn what works and what doesn’t, both from their own experience, as well as the experience of others.
For the #Arabs, the defeat in this war was and remains a searing trauma.
Not only had the goal that had united the Arabs in 1948—preventing the establishment of a Jewish state in the heart of the #Arab#MiddleEast—been thwarted, but hundreds of thousands of Arabs living in #Palestine had been displaced by war.
In time, their #displacement became the enduring image of that defeat and humiliation.
#FarhanHaq, a #UN spokesperson, said the new smaller numbers reflected those bodies which had been fully identified. The bigger figures included corpses for whom identification has so far not been completed.
The crash comes as the #MiddleEast remains unsettled by the Israel-Hamas war, during which #Raisi under Supreme Leader Ayatollah #AliKhamenei launched an unprecedented drone-and-missile attack on #Israel just last month.
Raisi, 63, a hard-liner who formerly led the country’s judiciary, was viewed as a protégé of Khamenei and even as a possible successor.
Iran's president, foreign minister and others found dead at helicopter crash site (apnews.com)
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country’s foreign minister and several other officials were found dead on Monday, hours after their helicopter crashed, state media reported.