Iran’s President Ebrahim Raisi, along with the country’s foreign minister and others, were found dead Monday morning hours after their helicopter crashed in dense fog in a mountainous region of the country’s northwest, state media reported. Raisi was 63.
The crash comes at a hugely tumultuous time for the Middle East amid the Israel-Hamas war, during which Raisi, under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, launched an unprecedented drone-and-missile attack on Israel just last month. Under Raisi, Iran has enriched uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels, further escalating tension with the West as Tehran also supplied bomb-carrying drones to Russia for its war in Ukraine and continued arming proxy groups in the Mideast such as Yemen’s Houthi rebels and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Hellbound and Down 