The helicopter, which was also carrying Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, went down in poor weather.

Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi has been confirmed killed after the helicopter he was travelling in crashed in poor weather.

The bodies of Raisi, as well as the foreign minister and others who were aboard, were found on Monday morning, some hours after their helicopter crashed in Iran’s wild northwest region, state media reported. The accident challenges the country’s senior leadership as Iran sits in the midst of heightened regional and global tensions centred on the war in Gaza.

Raisi was seen as a protégé to Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and a potential successor for his position within the country’s Shiite theocracy. Under the Iranian constitution, i the country’s first vice president, Mohammad Mokhber, would become president.  Presidential elections would need to be arranged within 50 days.

Khamenei has publicly assured Iranians that there would be “no disruption to the operations of the country” as a result of the crash.

Source: Aljazeera/France 24