The Kingdom of Morocco offered its sincere condolences to the Iranian people and the victims’ family members following the crash of the helicopter which brought an end to Iran President Ebrahim Raisi‘s life and those of six other government officials, stated Morocco’s foreign ministry on Monday.
The late Iranian president and his foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian were together–along with other officials–returning from a ceremony commemorating the inauguration of a dam on Iran’s border with Azerbaijan. All were passengers on a “Bell 212” helicopter model, a vestige of the UH-1N used during Vietnam war era.
Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who wields ultimate control and holds the final word on foreign policy and on Iran’s nuclear program, said that First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber will serve as the interim president, according to the official IRNA news agency.
“I announce five days of public mourning and offer my condolences to the dear people of Iran,” Khamenei stated in a press release. Mokhber, like Raisi, is considered close to Khamenei.
The Islamic Republic’s constitution requires a new presidential election within 50 days.
Any candidate must first be vetted by the Guardian Council, a hardline watchdog that has frequently dismissed famous conservative and moderate officials.
The deaths of two of Iran’s most powerful political heavyweights come as the country faces enormous economic and political strain, with tensions with neighboring Israel at a perilous high, compounded by the country’s hardline religious establishment’s anxiety as regional tensions and domestic dissatisfaction rise.
The Red Crescent’s drone footage of the helicopter wreckage, aired on Iranian official television, showed what remained at the crash scene on a steep, forested hillside, with nothing left of the helicopter other than its blue and white tail.
Raisi’s death comes at a critical moment for Tehran, seven months into Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza, which has sparked tensions throughout the Middle East and dragged a decades-long shadow conflict between Israel and Iran into the open.
The 63-year-old, who had represented conservative and hardline forces in Iranian politics, had been president for over three years and had been expected to stand for re-election next year.
Bell Helicopter designed the aircraft for the Canadian military in the late 1960s as an improvement to the original UH-1 Iroquois. The revised design employed two turboshaft engines instead of one, resulting in a larger carrying capacity. According to U.S. military training papers, the helicopter debuted in 1971 and was soon integrated into U.S. and Canadian military forces.
Bell Helicopter promotes the latest model, the Subaru Bell 412, for police, medical transport, military transport, the energy industry, and firefighting. According to the type certification documentation filed with the European Union Aviation Safety Agency, it can transport 15 passengers, including the crew.
According to the Flight Safety Foundation, a non-profit organization dedicated to aviation safety, the most recent tragic crash of a Bell 212 occurred in September, 2023, when a privately flown aircraft crashed off the coast of the UAE.
According to Western analysts, Iran has maintained its civil and military aviation fleets since the 1979 revolution using a combination of smuggled parts and reverse-engineering.