Hours before Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi died in a helicopter crash that also killed his foreign minister and eight other senior officials, Iran state media shared videos of the leader on board the chopper on Sunday.

The video shows the Iranian leader looking out of an aircraft window as the camera pans to show several senior officials including Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian seated opposite him.

In a clip, shared by Iran video, the President can be seen meeting officials before he boarded the chopper. Approximately 30 minutes after the aircraft took off, contact was lost with it. Nearly 16 hours after that, the mangled wreckage of the helicopter was found on a mountain peak.

ایرانی صدر ابراہیم رئیسائی کا آخری سفر، ہیلی کاپٹر حادثے سے پہلے ڈیم کے فضائی دورے کی ویڈیو۔۔!!#Iranpic.twitter.com/LOn5h1Lsdq

— Khurram Iqbal (@khurram143) May 20, 2024

“The servant of Iranian nation, Ayatollah Ebrahim Raisi has achieved the highest level of martyrdom whilst serving the people,” state television said.

Iranian media initially described the situation as an “accident”. Iran’s Deputy President for Executive Affairs Mohsen Mansouri said two officials had established contact with rescue teams, suggesting that the crash might not have been cataclysmic. 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed grief over the death of the Iranian President and said that India stands with Iran in its “time of sorrow”.

“Deeply saddened and shocked by the tragic demise of Dr. Seyed Ebrahim Raisi, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran. His contribution to strengthening India-Iran bilateral relationship will always be remembered. My heartfelt condolences to his family and the people of Iran. India stands with Iran in this time of sorrow,” he said in a post on X.

PM Modi had expressed “deep concern” when the Iranian leader’s helicopter had gone missing, saying he was praying for the well-being of the president and his entourage.
 

Prime Minister Narendra Modi expressed grief over the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, who died in a chopper crash on Sunday, and said that India stands with Iran in its “time of sorrow”.

“Deeply saddened and shocked by the tragic demise of Dr. Seyed Ebrahim Raisi, President of the Islamic Republic of Iran. His contribution to strengthening India-Iran bilateral relationship will always be remembered. My heartfelt condolences to his family and the people of Iran. India stands with Iran in this time of sorrow,” he said in a post on X.

PM Modi had expressed “deep concern” when the Iranian leader’s helicopter had gone missing, saying he was praying for the well-being of the president and his entourage which included Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian. 

India on May 13 signed a 10-year contract to operate the strategic Iranian port of Chabahar that will help it expand trade with Central Asia.

The helicopter, which was part of a convoy, was carrying President Raisi and other senior leaders, including Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian. Contact with the aircraft was lost almost 30 minutes after it took off, reportedly after it experienced bad weather while crossing a mountainous region in the country’s east Azerbaijan province.

Foreign Minister S Jaishankar also condoled the death of the two Iranian leaders and recalled his meetings with them. “Deeply shocked to hear of the passing away of Iran’s President Dr Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister H. Amir-Abdollahian in the helicopter crash. Recall my many meetings with them, most recently in January 2024. Our condolences to their families. We stand with the people of Iran at time of this tragedy,” he said in a post on X.

Deeply shocked to hear of the passing away of Iran’s President Dr Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister H. Amir-Abdollahian in the helicopter crash.

Recall my many meetings with them, most recently in January 2024.

Our condolences to their families. We stand with the people of…

— Dr. S. Jaishankar (Modi Ka Parivar) (@DrSJaishankar) May 20, 2024

The news of the Iranian President’s death comes as tensions are rising in the region, particularly in light of the Gaza conflict and Iran’s recent escalations with Israel.

President Raisi, who has been in office since 2021, had pledged Iran’s steadfast support for Palestine, a stance reiterated during his recent dam inauguration speech.

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi died after his helicopter crashed in the mountains yesterday. Raisi was in line to be Iran’s next supreme leader, along with a clampdown on morality questions.

Raisi’s hardline position had been all pervasive in domestic politics while he governed through a severe economic crisis and a historic escalation of the country’s conflict with Israel.

Raisi took over as president in 2021, succeeding the moderate Hassan Rouhani, for a term marked by crisis and conflict.

Return Of Morality Police

Raisi was personally involved in two of the darkest periods of Iranian repression.

A year after his election, the mid-ranking cleric ordered that authorities tighten the enforcement of Iran’s “hijab and chastity law” restricting women’s attire and behaviour.

Iran saw a wave of protests triggered by the death in custody of Iranian-Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini in September 2022 after her arrest for allegedly flouting dress rules for women.

The nationwide protests presented one of the gravest challenges to Iran’s clerical rulers since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Hundreds were killed, according to rights groups, including dozens of security personnel who were part of a fierce crackdown on the demonstrators as the president insisted “acts of chaos are unacceptable.”

Why Raisi Was Labelled ‘The Butcher Of Tehran’

For Iran’s exiled opposition and human rights groups, Raise’s name evoked mass executions of Marxists and other leftists in 1988, when he was deputy prosecutor of the Revolutionary Court in Tehran.

Inquisitions known as “death committees” were set up across Iran, comprising religious judges, prosecutors and intelligence ministry officials who decided the fate of thousands of detainees in arbitrary trials that lasted just a few minutes, according to a report by Amnesty International.

While the number of people killed across Iran was never confirmed, Amnesty said minimum estimates put it at 5,000.

The 1988 mass execution earned him the dubious soubriquet of ‘The Butcher of Tehran’.

Iran-Israel Tensions

The Gaza war sent regional tensions soaring again and a series of tit-for-tat escalations led to Tehran launching hundreds of missiles and rockets directly at Israel in April this year.

Raisi recently emphasised Iran’s support for Palestinians, a centrepiece of its foreign policy since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

“We believe that Palestine is the first issue of the Muslim world, and we are convinced that the people of Iran and Azerbaijan always support the people of Palestine and Gaza and hate the Zionist regime,” said Raisi.

A Conservative Hardliner

Ebrahim Raisi, 63, rose through Iran’s theocracy from hardline prosecutor to uncompromising president, overseeing a crackdown on protests at home and pushing hard in nuclear talks with world powers.

Raisi’s career started in the years after the 1979 Islamic revolution. He was close to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Like Khamenei, Raisi often spoke up defiantly as Iran, the biggest Shiite Muslim power, was locked in a tense standoff with its declared arch foes the United States and Israel. Raisi has been on Washington’s sanctions blacklist for complicity in “serious human rights violations”.

Raisi took a tough stance in the nuclear negotiations, seeing a chance to win broad relief from US sanctions in return for only modest curbs on Iran’s increasingly advanced technology.

In 2018, then-US President Donald Trump had reneged on the deal Tehran had made with the six powers and restored harsh US sanctions on Iran, prompting Tehran to progressively violate the agreement’s nuclear limits.

Indirect talks between Tehran and US President Joe Biden’s administration to revive the deal have stalled.