Helicopter crash that killed Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi caused by weather, report finds
The helicopter crash that killed Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and seven other people in May was caused by challenging climatic and atmospheric conditions, Iranian state TV reported Sunday.
The final report of the Supreme Board of the General Staff of the Armed Forces said the main cause of the helicopter crash was the complex climatic conditions of the region in spring, state TV said.
The report also cited the sudden appearance of a thick mass of dense fog rising upwards as the helicopter collided with the mountain.
According to the report, there were no signs of sabotage in parts and systems.
Raisi died along with seven others including Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, who was 60, in the crash in a remote mountainous area of northwestern Iran. The helicopter also carried the governor of the East Azerbaijan province, along with other officials and bodyguards, Iran's state-run IRNA news agency said at the time of the crash.
Turkish authorities released drone video showing a heat signature at a site in the wilderness that they "suspected to be wreckage of helicopter." The coordinates listed in the video put the fire some 12 miles south of the Azerbaijan-Iranian border, on the side of a steep, forested mountain.
Raisi, a hard-liner, had been viewed as a protégé of Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and some analysts believed he could even replace the octogenarian supreme leader when the ayatollah dies or steps down.
He was the second Iranian president to die in office. In 1981, a bomb blast killed President Mohammad Ali Rajai in the chaotic days after the revolution.