A senior Iranian politician has publicly cast doubt on the cause of the helicopter crash in which former president Ebrahim Raisi died in 2024.
"To this day, I have never accepted that this was something normal or merely an ordinary accident," said Mohammed Mokhber, who had advised Iran's supreme leader until February, in an interview broadcast on state television on Thursday evening.
Two years ago, the ultra-conservative Raisi, along with then foreign minister Hussein Amir-Abdollahian and seven other people died in a helicopter crash in the country's north-west.
The delegation's helicopter went down in a hilly, wooded area in May 2024 whilst returning from a state visit to neighbouring Azerbaijan. The search for the crash site took many hours. Sabotage or an attack were later officially ruled out as the cause of the incident.
Rumours of external interference had circulated at the time but were firmly rejected by the Iranian government.
The crash occurred at a time of high military tensions, with the Gaza war in full swing and only a month after Israel bombed the Iranian consulate in Damascus, killing some high-ranking generals. That attack triggered the first Iranian missile strike on Israeli territory.
Mokhber told state television that he had personally raised his concerns with the former head of state, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who was killed in a targeted Israeli airstrike at the end of February.
There had been "every possibility of technical interference or manipulation," said Mokhber, who served as interim president following Raisi's death and until early presidential elections were held in late June and early July.
