Helicopter found …Iran President and Foreign Minister are dead….

Ebrahim Raisi

Ebrahim Raisi, Iran’s president and a top contender to succeed the nation’s supreme leader, was killed on Sunday in a helicopter crash. He was 63.

A conservative Shiite Muslim cleric who had a hand in some of the most brutal crackdowns on opponents of the Islamic Republic, Mr. Raisi was a protégé of Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and a devoted upholder of religious rule in the country.

Mr. Raisi’s presidency was shaped by two major events: the 2022 nationwide uprising, led by women and girls, demanding the end to the Islamic Republic’s rule and the government’s brutal crushing of that movement; and the current Middle East war with Israel, with which it had a long history of clandestine attacks.

As the president under Iran’s political system, Mr. Raisi did not set the country’s nuclear or regional policy. But he inherited a government that was steadily expanding its regional influence through a network of proxy militia groups and a nuclear program that was rapidly advancing to weapons-grade uranium enrichment levels following the United States’ exit from a nuclear deal.

Mr. Raisi endorsed and supported both of these policies and viewed them as essential for Iran to maintain its influence in the region and to exercise leverage over the West.

His death came as a yearslong shadow war became one of direct confrontation in the wake of Israel’s military assault on Gaza in retaliation for the Oct. 7 Hamas attacks on Israel….

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Mr. Raisi’s supporters, including conservative pundits on state media, praised him for reimposing strict religious and social rules, being intolerant of dissent and turning Iran’s policies away from the West toward more engagement with Russia and China…

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Mr. Raisi campaigned as an anticorruption candidate but took up the presidency under a cloud of condemnation by government opponents and international rights groups. Rights groups highlighted Mr. Raisi’s background as a member of a four-person panel that ordered the execution of 5,000 political dissidents in 1988 without trials at the end of the Iran-Iraq war. Mr. Raisi has not denied being part of the panel and said in a speech that he was a junior official appointed to the role by the supreme leader at the time.

“We lost a generation of political minds and activists who could have been important players in Iranian society,” said Hadi Ghaemi, executive director of the Center for Human Rights in Iran.

Mr. Raisi, he argued, played a hand in several of the most repressive moments of Iranian history, in particular the crackdowns on antigovernment protests in 2009 and 2022…..

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Mr. Raisi’s impact on domestic policy during his presidency has been felt far more deeply, and his legacy is likely to be a contested one. During his rule, the country suffered severe economic downturns, driven by international sanctions and high unemployment….

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“If you want to think of his legacy, he left the country’s economy in ruins, and it has become more repressive,” said Sina Azodi, a lecturer on Iran at George Washington University. “Iran was never democratic or free, but, since 2021, political repression has increased. No voice of dissent is tolerated.”….

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After many Iranian women defied the mandatory hijab rule and appeared in public for over a year without covering their hair, Mr. Raisi announced this spring that he was going to re-enforce the hijab rule. His government dispatched the morality police back on the streets in April, after having earlier said the force was abolished, and many arrests of women turned violent….

More…

Note….

During the serach for the downed helicopter?

There WAS a LOT of Happy Irainians on social media about the possible loss of hardline President Raisi…..