Iran Blames Sanctions For President’s Death
Dropping support for religious government might defuse the impact
Stormy weather made visibility impossible on the Azerbaijan border, as views confirm from the site of a helicopter crash that killed Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi.
The scars on the steep, wooded hillside testify to the force of the impact.
Raisi had been flown to the far north-western province of East Azerbaijan to inaugurate the Qiz Qalasi and Khoda Afarin dams, a joint hydroelectric power project. His executive team was on its way home when they encountered the stormy weather and poor visibility.
The governor of Iran’s East Azerbaijan province was also on board, along with other officials and bodyguards.
Mohamed Raisi was the first in line as a successor to Ayatollah Ali Khameini’s title of supreme leader.
Ayatollah Ali Khamenei expressed his condolences over what he called the “bitter tragedy” and declared five days of public mourning: “With deep sorrow and regret, I have received the bitter news of the martyrdom of the people’s president, the competent, hard-working Hajj Sayyed Ebrahim Raisi, and his esteemed entourage.”
The helicopter was a Bell 212, developed by a US company for the Canadian military in the 1960s. The last fatal incident involving that model occurred in 2018, during a medical evacuation. Together with purchases of other models, Iran became the Middle East’s largest military helicopter power. The one that flew PM Raisi might have been 50 years old.
Former foreign minister Mohammad Javad Zarif told state TV that the US was indirectly to blame for the crash because it had maintained years of sanctions that prevented Iran from buying new aircraft:
“One of the main culprits of yesterday’s tragedy is the United States, which … embargoed the sale of aircraft and aviation parts to Iran and does not allow the people of Iran to enjoy good aviation facilities,” he said.
“These will be recorded in the list of US crimes against the Iranian people.”
The following information comes from Al Jazeera, which interviewed aviation analyst Alex Macheras. He confirmed that it is likely that the decades-long sanctions against Iran have played a role in the helicopter crash because its fleet is old and deteriorating.
“The helicopter involved was acquired over 40 years ago. … Iran is home to the world’s oldest commercial aviation fleet. It is a similar scenario to those aircraft that are owned privately.”
About 2,000 Iranians have died in aircraft crashes since 1979, he added.
“This is a country that because of the sanctions has struggled to obtain spare parts. In aviation, spare parts are fundamental in order to provide adequate maintenance not least to young jets but especially to the older jets that need extra care,” Macheras said.
“When aircraft are not receiving the maintenance that is required, you end up in a territory that puts ultimately the lives of those on board an older aircraft at risk,” he added.
Russian Security Council Secretary Sergei Shoigu, who until last week was defence minister, says Moscow is ready to provide assistance in Iran’s investigation into the cause of the crash. This is the person who can’t figure out why his ships keep sinking and his depots keep exploding. Putin expressed his condolences to Iranian Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei over the death of Raisi, who he called “a true friend of Russia”.
He got on the phone right away to Iran’s interim President Mohammad Mokhber, adding that the two leaders stressed their “mutual intention to further strengthen Russian-Iranian interaction”.
First Vice President Mohammad Mokhber has now assumed the duties of president, and Ali Bagheri Kani, previously the top nuclear negotiator, is the country’s acting foreign minister.
Another potential successor is Khamenei’s 54-year-old son Mojtaba. He has already been the target of protests by people who claimed that votes had been rigged against a reformer candidate to allow him to succeed his father.
Egyptian President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, Chinese President Xi Jinping and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, have offered their condolences.
Syria and Lebanon have declared three days of mourning.
Hezbollah has issued a statement offering its “deepest condolences”.
The President of the European Council expressed his sincere condolences.
The reaction from Florida Republican Michael Waltz was a bit different; Waltz if the first green Beret to serve in Congress…
Iranian-Canadian actor and producer Shiva Negar also had no regrets, posting “Goodbye to the butcher of Tehran. You will not be missed!”
Raisi’s administrative actions included a crackdown on mass protests after 22-year-old Mahsa Amini died on Sept. 16, 2022, days after she was arrested by Iran's morality police for allegedly failing to adhere to the government's mandatory rules on headscarves for women and other gender-based restrictions. I confess I thought the protests would have far more impact than they did in terms of regime change…but on the other hand, they have not gone away either.
Looking at the real cause of the sanctions, we see the deathly hand of Donald Trump.
Trump destroyed Obama’s nuclear pact with Iran.
He withdrew the US from the historic Iran nuclear deal, unravelling the Obama Administration’s signature foreign-policy achievement and putting the United States on a collision course with allies, as well as with Tehran.
He also re-imposed economic sanctions on Iran.
In a rebuke to Trump, the leaders of Britain, France, and Germany expressed “regret” over Trump’s decision – but the damage had been done.
Technically he made the United States the first nation to violate the nuclear accord. The International Atomic Energy Agency issued ten reports saying that Tehran is in full compliance with its obligations. Iran had agreed to be under the toughest inspections and verification-inspections regime ever imposed. And as soon as Trump ended the agreement, the right to inspections disappeared. Blindness set in…which is perhaps an appropriate metaphor for Trump’s policies.
James Dobbins, former U.S. Ambassador to the E.U., who negotiated with Iran after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, said that the decision “isolates the United States, frees Iran, reneges on an American commitment, adds to the risk of a trade war with America’s allies and to a hot war with Iran and diminishes the prospects of a durable and truly verifiable agreement…”
Since America trampled on the agreement, Iran has gone ahead and increased its nuclear enrichment program, built reactors -- and earned US sanctions.
Trump disdained the support of a country of 86 million people – the second-largest country in Western Asia. Iran's growth in its scientific output is reported to be the fastest in the world. Tehran also ranked 9th among top regions (clusters) of science and technology in middle-income countries, and in the top half of the world’s leading science and technology clusters.
It is possible that Trump’s scorn for another country - Ukraine - encouraged his pal Putin to invade the country. If this were true, Trump would be responsible for abetting the return of warfare to the European continent for the first time since WW2. 80-plus years of peace broken because Trump is despicable.
The only winner, oddly, was Iran, which began selling drones to Russia for its war against Ukraine.
Not only did Trump cut Iran free to develop its nuclear weapons on its own, but he provided them with an income from drone sales to Russia to fund its nuclear program.
And now his sanctions have helped drive an Iranian helicopter into a mountain.
Raisi’s death comes at a pivotal moment in Iranian social evolution.
There have been huge changes in faith in Iran: secularism is on an approximate par with America. The data is astounding, but it seems reputable: it comes from a non-profit registered in the Netherlands run by a Dutch law professor.
It implies that the fundamentalist version of Islam that is held by government hard-liners, is restricted to a Muslim support base that makes up less than a third of the population.
I would guess that the main thing holding it together, would be external forces like the US sanctions and attacks by Israel.
It also means that the country is not stuck in the past…it is capable of rapid liberalism once the theocracy is removed.
This should fit with the record low turn-out in Iran’s last election, which hit the 41% mark. The election followed anti-government protests in 2022-23 that spiralled into some of Iran's worst political turmoil since the 1979 Islamic revolution.
None of this is meant to detract from the grief felt by mourners for the helicopter crash victims. Here is the full list of people who died in the crash along with the President:
Hossein Amirabdollahian, Iran’s foreign minister
Malik Rahmati, governor of Iran’s East Azerbaijan Province
Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Al-Hashem, representative of the Iranian supreme leader to East Azerbaijan
Sardar Seyed Mehdi Mousavi, head of Raisi’s guard team
Colonel Seyed Taher Mostafavi, pilot
Colonel Mohsen Daryanush, co-pilot
Major Behrouz Ghadimi, flight technician
Not everything is lost in terms of Iranian-Western relations. Despite the strained relationships, diplomatic channels remain open between the EU and Iran. The European Commission responded quickly to a request from Iran last night to activate a rapid response mapping system it has to help with the search for the crashed helicopter.
Iran had reacted calmly to the Israeli bombing campaign aimed at its consulate in Damascus; its rockets and drones did little damage as they were not targeted to populated areas. There is nothing in the death of Raisi that would automatically raise the temperature of the region; hopefully the same calm minds will prevail in Teran as events unfold.
Israel doesn’t have a really strategic approach to its perceived need for a conflict with Iran, says said Yagil Levy, a professor of military sociology at the Open University of Israel. “… the attempt to identify the [connections] between specific military actions and expected benefits is not in the repertoire of the Israeli leadership. Israel is led by the availability of its weapons systems. And whenever the country or the leadership feels that they have a good intelligence, a good opportunity and available weaponry systems that can do the job, Israel strikes.”
Israel’s outreach for a new conflict with Iran does not bode well for its regional success.
Iran may not have been able to surmount a US sanctions drive, but it has put together a remarkably successful drone manufacturing industry.
Perhaps at this point, with Iran in mourning, it might be a good time for the US to offer to review and amend the sanctions policy.
“Success” in a policy is unlikely to be measured by the degree of vicarious pain you can cause another country. It will be measured by how much you can help them.
This is an excellent opportunity to step up and mend a few fences…