This is breaking news as the helicopter crash with Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi as a passenger happened minutes ago; there is no word on any injuries or deaths at this time from State media. Razi is not to be confused with the Supreme Lader currently held by Ayatollah Khamenei. Razi reportedly was being groomed to be his replacement, so policy will unlikely change in Iran if Razi dies.
The state-run Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA) said President Raisi was returning from a ceremony to open a dam on Iran's border with Azerbaijan when his helicopter crashed upon landing.
The incident is believed to have occurred near Jolfa, a city sitting on the border with Azerbaijan, some 375 miles northwest of Tehran, Iran's capital.
Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, the governor of Iran's East Azerbaijan province, Malik Rahmati, and other officials were on board the helicopter, the state-run IRNA news agency reported.
One local government official used the word "crash" to describe the incident, but he told an Iranian newspaper that he had yet visited the site himself, the Associated Press reported.
Raisi is (was) a real dick. He is 63 years old and was elected President of Iran in 2021. He is responsible for tightening morality laws and has ordered a bloody crackdown on anti-government protesters and executed and massacred tens of thousands over the years. In the late eighties, Ayatollah Khomeini issued a fatwa ordering the murder of protestors, and he enthusiastically complied. Thereafter, he is known as the Butcher of Tehran for killing 33,000 Iranians in 1988. He was a member of Tehran’s Death Commission, and his hatred of Jews is abhorrent.
On June 6, 2018, Ali Khamenei appointed Ebrahim Raisi as the head of Iran’s judiciary. Raisi’s role in the 1988 massacre of political prisoners played a pivotal role in his elevation to this position, especially in the aftermath of a nationwide uprising at the beginning of 2018.Twitter states that heavy rain is now falling at the crash site. Currently, no air or road rescue operations can reach the site.
This video was reportedly taken one hour before the crash, with Iranian and Azerbaijan officials on an aerial view of the Chamshir Dam’s progress.
In aviation, instrument flight rules (IFR) is one of two sets of regulations governing all aspects of civil aviation aircraft operations; the other is visual flight rules (VFR).
The U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Instrument Flying Handbook defines IFR as: "Rules and regulations established by the FAA to govern flight under conditions in which flight by outside visual reference is not safe. IFR flight depends upon flying by reference to instruments in the flight deck, and navigation is accomplished by reference to electronic signals."[1] It is also a term used by pilots and controllers to indicate the type of flight plan an aircraft is flying, such as an IFR or VFR flight plan.[2]
Since it’s Pride Month, I suspect there won’t be a tear shed for this monster anywhere.