Knowing Ebrahim Raisi: All About The Iranian President Who Died In A Helicopter Crash

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, 63, and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, died after a helicopter carrying them and other officials crashed amid bad weather in a mountainous area of the country.

Iranian state media Press TV and semi-official Tasnim and Mehr news agencies reported all those on board were killed. Reuters also reported the president's death, citing a senior official.

"President Raisi, the foreign minister and all the passengers in the helicopter were killed in the crash," the official told Reuters.

The helicopter carrying nine people ran into trouble in heavy fog while returning from a trip to the Iran-Azerbaijan border, Iranian officials said Sunday, CNN reported.

Al Jazeera said Raisi, a figure representing conservative and hardline factions in Iranian politics, was president for nearly three years, and appeared on track to run for re-election next year.

Raisi won the election in 2021 to become Iran's eighth president in a vote that saw the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic's history. He assumed office during an economic crisis triggered by the US withdrawal from a landmark nuclear deal and the worst COVID-19 outbreak in the Middle East, Bloomberg news agency reported.

A former chief justice, Raisi was widely seen as a potential successor to Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, the 85-year-old Supreme Leader of Iran. His death removes the only serious rival to Khamenei’s son, Mojtaba, to take the top job, according to Bloomberg.

He is reported to have been a longtime member of the Assembly of Experts, the body that is tasked with choosing a replacement for the supreme leader in the event of his death.

Raisi was born in 1960 in Mashhad in northeastern Iran, which is a religious hub for Shia Muslims. He lost his father when he was five years old, but followed in his footsteps to become a cleric. He underwent religious training at the seminary in Qom, studying under prominent scholars, including Khamenei. Here, as a student, he joined protests against the Western-backed Shah in the 1979 revolution.

In his early 20s, he was married to Jamileh Alamolhoda, the daughter of an ultraconservative cleric, and together they had two daughters.

Raisi first ran for president in 2017, unsuccessfully challenging the re-election of former President Hassan Rouhani, who represented the centrist and moderate camps. His failure was widely attributed to an audio tape dating from 1988 that surfaced in 2016 and purportedly highlighted his role in the 1988 mass execution of thousands of political prisoners at the end of the bloody Iran-Iraq war.

In 2019, Raisi was appointed by Khamenei as the new head of Iran's judiciary system.

Raisi was sanctioned by the US in 2019, over his role in human rights violations over many decades. In 2018, Amnesty International accused him of being a member of a "death commission" that forcibly disappeared and executed thousands of political dissidents in the late 1980s.

A Bloomberg report said during Raisi's time in office, Iran was gripped by some of the most widespread and violent protests in the Islamic Republic's history.

Triggered by the death of a young woman who had died in police custody shortly after being arrested for allegedly violating Islamic dress codes, the protests were brutally suppressed.

He entered office pledging to end efforts to build trade ties with the West and instead focus on developing links with China and Russia. He had also promised steps to boost the economy, which had been battered by years of sanctions. However, Iran's currency has plunged to successive lows against the dollar and the country is facing mounting pressure to boost cooperation with UN inspectors of its nuclear program, or face diplomatic censure followed by a potential referral to the UN Security Council.

According to the Associated Press, under Raisi, Iran now enriches uranium at nearly weapons-grade levels and hampers international inspections. Iran has armed Russia in its war on Ukraine, as well as launched massive drone and missile attacks on Israel amid its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. It also has continued arming proxy groups in the Mideast, like Yemen's Houthi rebels and Lebanon's Hezbollah.