A rescue operation is underway in the mountains close to the Iranian-Azerbaijani border after one of the helicopters in a convoy carrying Iran’s president, Ebrahim Raisi, was involved in a “hard landing” on Sunday, according to Iranian state media.
Neither the state-run IRNA news agency nor state television offered any information on Raisi’s condition, but prayers were aired for the safety of the president, who had been travelling in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province.
State TV said the incident happened near Jolfa, a city on the border with Azerbaijan, about 375 miles (600km) north-west of the Iranian capital, Tehran.
Traveling with Raisi were Iran’s foreign minister, Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the governor of East Azerbaijan and other officials, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. A local government official used the word “crash” to describe the incident, but he acknowledged to an Iranian newspaper that he had yet to reach the site.
“The esteemed president and company were on their way back aboard some helicopters and one of the helicopters was forced to make a hard landing due to the bad weather and fog,” Iran’s interior minister, Ahmad Vahidi, said in comments aired on state TV.
“Various rescue teams are on their way to the region but because of the poor weather and fogginess it might take time for them to reach the helicopter.”
He added: “The region is a bit [rugged] and it’s difficult to make contact. We are waiting for rescue teams to reach the landing site and give us more information.”
Raisi had been in Azerbaijan early on Sunday to inaugurate a dam with the country’s president, Ilham Aliyev. The dam is the third that the two nations have built on the Aras River. The visit came despite chilly relations between the two nations, including over a gun attack on Azerbaijan’s embassy in Tehran in 2023, and Azerbaijan’s diplomatic relations with Israel, which Iran’s Shia theocracy views as its main enemy in the region.
Iran owns a variety of helicopters, 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.
Raisi, 63, is a hardliner who formerly led the country’s judiciary. He is viewed as a protege of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and some analysts have suggested he could replace the 85-year-old leader after his death or resignation from the role.
He won Iran’s 2021 presidential election, a vote that saw the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic’s history. Raisi is under sanctions by the US in part over his involvement in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 at the end of the bloody Iran-Iraq war.
Credit: Guardian
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