The death of Iran’s President and Foreign Minister in a plane crash on 19 May was an unexpected tragic event. What happened and can Tehran’s foreign policy approaches change after the snap elections?

Too coincidental to look like an accident

The crash of an Iranian helicopter in East Azerbaijan on 19 May this year, which resulted in the death of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and other officials returning from neighboring Azerbaijan after a meeting with President Ilham Aliyev, was a shock to the Iranian and much of the international community.

It cannot be said that in today’s technogenic world one can completely rule out plane crashes, the causes of which can be various objective and subjective factors (including weather conditions, technical failures, pilot errors, etc.). As they say, the sky does not forgive mistakes, regardless of the status of passengers. At the same time, in all such cases, when the victims are officials (moreover, top officials of states whose political course runs counter to other centers of power), the fact of subversive influence (sabotage, terror) of interested special services and organisations cannot be excluded.

Of course, the Iranian authorities will take appropriate measures for a comprehensive, complete and objective investigation of all the details of the causes of the tragedy. According to the Mehr News Agency, the law enforcement agencies and special services have already been instructed to do so.

However, strangely enough, the order to establish a commission of enquiry came on 20 May, that is, after the information about the death of the Iranian President was made public, on behalf of Major General Mohammad Bagheri, Chief of General Staff of the Iranian Armed Forces, and not from Supreme Leader or rahbar Ali Khamenei and the heads of the relevant agencies (law enforcement agencies and intelligence services). Bagheri appointed Brigadier General Ali Abdollahi to head the investigation, and representatives of the Iranian army will also take part in the process.

Usually, flight No. 1 with the Iranian President was piloted by IRGC representatives. On the same day, the Bell-212 helicopter that E. Raisi boarded was piloted by a representative of the army. Raisi was piloted by a representative of the army. Maybe this circumstance was the reason for General Baghiri’s order?

From the very beginning the information about the crash of the Iranian helicopter that was received by the media contained many contradictions and inaccuracies. As it is known, initially the Iranian side reported that board No. 1 with the President and the Foreign Minister of the Islamic Republic of Iran had made a forced hard landing due to difficult weather conditions; then it was reported that President E. Raisi and Foreign Minister A. Abdollahian with other members of the Iranian Foreign Ministry had made a hard landing. A rescue operation was launched to locate their location and movement; a little later it was reported that the weather had seriously deteriorated and search operations were hampered by fog and rain; then there was a shaky hope, because one of the members of the injured crew – the Friday prayer leader from the city of Tabriz, Mohammad Ali Ale-Hashem, (and according to some reports, Minister Abdollahian) made contact; at night it was reported that assistance was requested from neighboring Turkey to organise search operations using modern drones and detection equipment; finally, the worst predictions about the crash of the Bell-212 helicopter for unknown reasons (either weather or technical) and the death of the entire crew (including the President and Foreign Minister of Iran) were confirmed.

Obviously, this sequence of initial reports was due to limited data on the fate of the helicopter and crew. Unfortunately, the search and rescue operations for a number of objective reasons (weather and technical) were not prompt enough and took too long. However, there are too many accidents in this case to consider the helicopter crash accidental.

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