Iran helicopter crash latest: Rescue teams search for Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi - BBC News

Shayan Sardarizadeh and Ghoncheh Habibiazad

BBC Verify and BBC Monitoring

Social media has been awash with false information following the news of an accident involving a helicopter carrying President Ebrahim Raisi.

A video of a helicopter crashing in a mountainous area, viewed 1.6m times, claims to show President Raisi's helicopter in Iran's East Azarbaijan province.

But BBC Verify has confirmed that the video dates back to July 2022, showing a border police rescue helicopter crashing in Gudauri, Georgia.

An image, viewed nearly 100,000 times, falsely claims to show wreckage of the helicopter carrying Raisi.

But the image appeared in a 2019 report about a helicopter crash in Morocco.

An unfounded rumour that claims Iran's state TV has suspended its normal programming to announce Raisi's death has also been widely shared.

However, state TV has not suspended its coverage, and continues to air updates on the ongoing search and rescue efforts to locate the helicopter.

A deleted tweet by Iran's Fars news agency, closely affiliated to the Revolutionary Guards Corps, shared an image of Raisi near a helicopter, claiming his helicopter had safely landed.

However, the image of Raisi was captured during rescue efforts after nationwide floods in July 2022, and the fate of the helicopter and those on board remains unknown.

Sebastian Usher

Middle East analyst

The difficulty with reporting on an incident like this in Iran is that we are reliant on information being released by a number of semi-official news agencies.

Those agencies don’t always speak with exactly the same voice. You will see officials quoted, but quite often those officials will be at odds in what they say.

What we haven’t had, beyond some general reassurances from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei, is a clear statement from the authorities of what they know in black and white.

I think many regional and world leaders will be watching the same reports that we’re watching from those agencies and trying to get some indication of what’s happening.

Iranian state news agency IRNA reports that although the site of the presumed crash has not yet been found, the search area is narrowing and now has a 2km radius.

Iranian TV is showing footage of rescuers walking up steep slopes in driving rain and darkness.

Meanwhile Hossein Salami, the commander of Iran's elite Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), has travelled to the crash area to investigate and speed up rescue operations, state news agency IRIB reports.

As the search to locate President Raisi continues, Iranians have gathered for vigils on the streets of the capital, Tehran.

Pictures from Vali-Asr square in the centre of the city show people kneeling in prayer. Here's a look at some of the latest images:

In the eyes of many Iranians, Ebrahim Raisi was placed in his position by disqualifying major contenders for the Presidency in 2021. He was largely carrying out the Supreme Leader's wishes. There has been competition among hardliners in Iran to have one of their own succeed the Supreme Leader.

So far, Raisi has been one of the most influential among conservatives.

This is why rumours about the incident have been spreading widely on social media among Iranians. Many are questioning how it is that the other two helicopters carrying ministers returned safely, but not the president's.

Most Iranians don't take Raisi seriously, which is why during the 2022 protests, we rarely heard any slogans against him. Instead, the supreme leader was the primary target.

We've got some more footage coming in now from Iranian state television - this time showing rescue vehicles lined up near the Azerbaijan-Iran border, as night begins to fall. Watch the footage below:

Let's take a look now at the reaction from foreign officials, following reports that a helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and his foreign minister crashed earlier as it flew through heavy fog:

• Russia, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Iraq have offered to assist rescue efforts to find the helicopter
• Russia also offered assistance with the investigation into the cause of the crash
• The United Arab Emirates has also offered support and says it stands by Iran
• Turkey sent a mountain rescue team to Iran, and earlier, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan said he was saddened by the accident,
• Writing in a post on X, Erdogan said: "I hope to receive good news from Raisi and his delegation as soon as possible"
• US President Joe Biden has been briefed on the incident, according to a White House spokesperson
• And Antonio Guterres, UN Secretary General, is following updates on the crash. "He hopes for the safety of the president and his entourage," a UN spokesperson said in a statement

Many around the world are closely watching the developments in Iran, wondering if there will be significant changes to Iran's policies in the region if President Ebrahim Raisi were to be harmed.

The short answer is not much.

Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, Iran's leader, expressed hope that the president and accompanying officials will return safely to the nation. He requested prayers for them and assured the Iranian people not to worry, as there will be no issues in running the country.

In the eyes of most Iranians, it is the supreme leader and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards (IRGC) who make major political and foreign policy decisions.

Raisi is one of the most conservative presidents Iran has ever had and is very close to the supreme leader. He is also one of the serious contenders to succeed as Iran's supreme leader.

However, instability could certainly affect the economy. Following the announcement of the news, the Iranian Rial plummeted against the US Dollar.

A major search operation is taking place in the mountains of north-west Iran, where a helicopter reportedly carrying President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian has gone missing.

Here's a recap of the latest developments:

• Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei urged Iranians to "not worry" following reports of the helicopter crash, saying "there will be no disruption in the country's work"
• The IRNA news agency reported that more than 40 rescue teams using search dogs and drones were sent to the crash site
• Raisi was returning from an area near the Iran-Azerbaijan border, where he opened two dams with his Azeri counterpart Ilham Aliyev, before reports of an accident emerged
• Aliyev said he was "profoundly troubled" after hearing news of the helicopter crash, adding that Azerbaijan was ready to offer any assistance needed
• A US state department spokesperson said it was "closely following reports of a possible hard landing", but offered no further comment
• Iran's interior minister said it will take "time to get to the location" of the crash site because of "bad weather conditions and fog in the area"

Stay with us for more

The European Union says it has activated its rapid response mapping service, known as Copernicus, to help with the search for the crashed helicopter.

The Copernicus system provides mapping products based on satellite imagery.

In a post on X, Janez Lenarcic, European commissioner for crisis management, says the EU is responding to a request for assistance from Iran.

We can now bring you footage broadcast on Iranian state television showing Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter earlier today, before reports of an accident emerged.

Watch by pressing the play button below:

Will Vernon

Reporting from Washington DC

Iranian state media have used the phrase "hard landing" to describe the reported crash of the Iranian President’s helicopter.

Hard landing is a phrase often used by authorities in Russia to describe incidents when aircraft crash. It is commonly used by the Russian Defence Ministry when reporting incidents with military aircraft.

For example, in June 2022 an Il-76 military cargo plane crashed in Russia’s Ryazan region, killing five service personnel on board. The Russian military initially described the incident as a hard landing, despite the fact that the aircraft was almost completely destroyed on impact.

Analysts say the word "crash" is avoided by Russian officials due to fears it can cause upset or panic. This is called newspeak, and other examples include calling an explosion a “bang” and a death of a soldier “an unidentified absence from a military unit".

We've just got in an image now of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi in Azerbaijan earlier today, prior to the reported helicopter crash.

The MEHR news agency says the image shows Raisi before boarding a helicopter, but it is unclear if this is before or after he visited two dams on the Iran-Azerbaijan border.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has just made a statement following reports President Ebrahim Raisi was involved in a helicopter crash.

He says the nation "should pray" for Raisi's health, state broadcaster IRIB reports.

"If the people of Iran do not worry, there will be no disruption in the work of the country", he adds.

Earlier, a spokesperson for the Red Crescent said three of the group's rescue workers had gone missing during the search for the crashed helicopter.

The organisation has now said that none of its workers are missing.

"All official updates about rescue operation will either come from the task force in charge of these operations," a spokeswoman added.

Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev says he was "profoundly troubled" after hearing reports about a helicopter crash involving Ebrahim Raisi.

Aliyev was with the Iranian president earlier today to open two dams around the Iran-Azerbaijan border.

"Today, after bidding a friendly farewell to the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ebrahim Raisi, we were profoundly troubled by the news of a helicopter carrying the top delegation crash-landing in Iran," he writes on X.

"Our prayers to Allah Almighty are with President Ebrahim Raisi and the accompanying delegation".

He adds that Azerbaijan is ready to offer any assistance needed.

Three rescue workers searching for the crashed helicopter have gone missing, a Red Crescent spokesperson says.

The search teams are close to the where the helicopter may have crashed, the spokesperson adds.

They say that the search operation will slow down as as the weather is expected to get "severely cold" soon, with more rain on the way.

Lyse Doucet

Chief international correspondent

Iran’s top diplomat Hossein Amir-Abdollahian is also in focus in this fateful moment.

In the past several months, as urgent diplomacy intensified around the Israel-Gaza war, he has been the voice on the phone, the face at the meeting, in constant contact with Iran’s allies, but also Arab and Western foreign ministers.

He occupies a key post in a system where ultimate power lies with the supreme leader, and where the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) hold sway over foreign policy.

During his decades in senior positions in the foreign ministry, he was known to have developed close ties with the IRGC, including its former commander Qasem Soleimani.

Since Ebrahim Raisi assumed the presidency in 2021, Abdollahian has been the Islamic Republic’s frequent flyer, travelling to capitals around the world in efforts to push back against efforts to isolate Iran, and to find ways to ease the impact of crippling international sanctions.

As we've been reporting, Iran's President Ebrahim Raisi was heading to the north-eastern city of Tabriz after returning from an Iran-Azerbaijan border area when the incident occurred.

Raisi had been visiting the Iran-Azerbaijan border, where he opened the Qiz Qalasi and Khodaafarin dams with his Azeri counterpart Ilham Aliyev.

Here are some of the latest images we've received of his visit earlier today.

We can bring you now some footage from Iranian state TV, which it claims shows rescuers on the way to the site of the reported helicopter crash.

There's been several reports of bad weather affecting access to the site. Watch below: