Wchicken the helicopter sporting Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi went lacking on Would possibly 19, preliminary stories mentioned 9 passengers had been on board, together with two bodyguards. However after the wreckage was once after all discovered, the collection of our bodies was once 8. 4 days later, the thriller of the second one bodyguard was once published in social media posts: Javad Mehrabl is observed leaning disconsolately within the rear of the memorial provider for Raisi. Press accounts mentioned that, on the final minute, his boss, Mehdi Mousavi, had directed him from the President’s helicopter to some of the two others transferring in convoy that day.
After Mousavi died within the crash, his father advised Iranian state tv that he knew his son would now not go back from this travel. “The night time ahead of the travel he visited us,” the daddy says on digital camera. “He mentioned good-bye and were given into his automotive however returned and stayed 20 mins. Then he left however after a brief power he returned once more and spent 10 extra mins with us.” He grows choked up. “The 3rd time when pronouncing good-bye he kissed his mom, he kissed his mom’s ft, he kissed me, after which bent down and kissed my ft.
“It was once then I knew he would move and not go back, I knew we’d by no means meet once more.”
The bodyguards had been contributors of a unique unit of the Islamic Modern Guard Corps, the army power created in 1979 to exchange an Iranian military distrusted via the rustic’s new theocratic executive. Their unit, Sepah Ansar al-Mahdi, is liable for the private safety of the regime’s senior officers. To that finish, its contributors raise telephones specifically provided now not just for safe verbal exchange, but additionally for location monitoring. The software Mousavi carried on board possibly would had been helpful in finding the helicopter, which went down in rugged terrain now not a ways from Iran’s border with Azerbaijan. But it took 16 hours for rescuers to achieve it.
The Sepah does now not seem to be below suspicion, a minimum of via Iran’s maximum senior legitimate: In a single photograph from the funeral for Raisi and different sufferers, Sepah bodyguards account for a just right two-thirds of the folks arrayed at the back of Excellent Chief Ali Khamenei. His throat is warmed, as standard, via the cross-hatched shawl of the IRGC that indicators his closeness to the Guard.
Greater than per week after Raisi was once killed, mysterious questions persist now not most effective concerning the crash, but additionally about what’s going to come subsequent.
One of the questions have explanations: The transponder on an airplane sporting senior officers reportedly was once switched off as an issue of regimen, out of concern of monitoring via opposed governments. When the helicopter went down, on a wooded hilltop in northwest Iran, one passenger survived lengthy sufficient to retrieve the pilot’s ringing mobile phone, attempted to explain the realm, and died looking ahead to rescue. Sparse cellular protection would have hampered efforts to find it via triangulation.
Nonetheless different questions could be spoke back via forensic technical investigation. Raisi’s leader of team of workers, who was once flying on any other chopper, mentioned that in a while ahead of disappearing, the President’s pilot ordered the opposite helicopters to climb in altitude with a view to upward push above clouds clinging to the hills. The opposite airplane did so, however the President’s helicopter was once now not heard from once more.
And a few data, whilst intriguing, is open to interpretation. Iranians may put the daddy’s tale, for example, to a few premonition available to the religious.
However others will pay attention it as proof of plot—one thing now not remarkable in a regime recognized each for its opacity and its brutality. Raisi’s aged mom added to the idea when she gave the impression in a video, visibly disappointed and calling for the loss of life of “any person who killed you as opposed to God.”
Her son was once extensively assumed to be within the operating to be successful Khamenei, who’s 85 and steadily reported to be in failing well being. Raisi was once supported in that effort via essentially the most excessive faction of regime stalwarts, the Paydari Entrance. As President, Raisi had imposed the crackdown on “modesty” that during 2022 ensnared Mahsa (Jina) Amini, who died within the custody of the so-called morality police for allegedly flawed hijab. He was once additionally the face of the regime’s brutal disagreement of the rebellion her loss of life impressed—and blamed for the brutal deaths of greater than 500 Iranians within the spontaneous motion that took “Girl, Lifestyles, Freedom” as its slogan. That he died coming back from the inauguration of a dam known as Qiz-Qalasi, or Castle of Women, struck some as poetic justice.
Human rights teams knew Raisi as a member of the so known as “Loss of life Committee” that during 1988 ordered the abstract execution of 1000’s of dissidents, described via regime officers themselves as “the largest atrocity of the Islamic Republic… for which we can be condemned via historical past.”
Fairly unknown to the overall populace simply 10 years in the past, Raisi have been speedy tracked to nationwide prominence simply as the problem of Khamenei’s succession was once gaining urgency. Rumors persist that the Excellent Chief has plans for his son, Mojtaba Khamenei, to be successful him. When, in a speech simply hours after Raisi’s helicopter had long gone lacking, Khamenei prayed for his protected go back however wired that “the folks must be assured that there will probably be no disturbance within the political opinions.” His calm means didn’t move not noted.
This could now not be the primary time that any person who didn’t percentage Khamenei’s imaginative and prescient for Iran’s long term management had met a suspicious finish. In 2017, former President Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani died in a swimming pool. A founding father of the Islamic Republic, Rafsanjani have been instrumental in propelling Khamenei to the highest process. However within the a long time that adopted, they fell out so completely that, by the point of his loss of life, Rafsanjani was once referred to as the highest opponent of the Excellent Chief inside the regime. When Rafsanjani’s circle of relatives reported that his frame recorded radioactive readings again and again upper than protected ranges, they asked an post-mortem. The request was once denied and, in a while afterwards, the case was once closed.
So it was once that, within the first hours after the helicopter crash, a fight emerged to outline its that means. An research of social media confirmed that 22% of X accounts concerned within the discussions of the crash had been pretend, “working inside a complicated disinformation marketing campaign” with a “attainable to achieve 6 million perspectives” within the first two days, in line with the cyber-security corporate Cyabra.
Cyabra, which is primarily based in Tel Aviv, says it documented a conspiracy idea circulating on-line that maintained a Mossad agent named “Eli Copter” had brought about the crash. The identify have been lifted from a comic story posted on Hebrew social media, however Israel’s secret agent company has killed a number of senior Iranian nuclear scientists and army figures in recent times. Regardless that any position in Raisis’s loss of life was once denied via Israel officers and discounted via Israeli analysts, the concept happens.
Handiest two months previous, in retaliation for an Israeli strike on an Iranian consulate development in Syria that killed two senior generals, Tehran introduced some 300 missiles and drones towards Israel—its first direct assault on Israeli territory. After Iraq introduced Scud missiles into Israel throughout the 1991 Gulf Conflict, Israel laid plans to assassinate Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, calling it off after a practice session ended within the unintended deaths of 5 Israeli commandos.
Any other of the campaigns promoted via the pretend accounts put ahead the “narrative that portrays Raisi as a countrywide hero,” the use of the similar hashtags as his supporters did. Faux accounts had been additionally concerned within the narrative that criticized him, regardless that the general public outbursts celebrating his loss of life had been actual sufficient. Clips that confirmed households of the ones killed via the regime shouting and dancing in pleasure changed into so daring that police started arresting any person they deemed to have “insulted” Raisi on-line.
The government may have was hoping that the loss of life of a President whilst acting his accountability would garner some sympathy for the Islamic Republic. However the divide between regime and society turns out too deep to be bridged via Raisi’s loss of life.
