Iranian State media has confirmed the death of the country’s president Ebrahim Raisi alongside the Foreign Affairs Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian in a helicopter crash last evening.
- •Rescue operations led by the Iranian Red Crescent were made difficult by the foggy conditions and the mountaineous terrain at the crash shite in the Eastern Azerbaijan province, 600 kilometers north west of the capital Tehran.
- •President Raisi, 63, and his minister were returning from a dam launch in Azerbaijan before the helicopter disappeared. Turkish authorities later released a drone footage of the burning wreckage in the forested area, helping the country’s authorities to locate the site for recovery efforts.
- •Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei has said the incident will not cripple government operations, and the vice president Mohammed Mohkber will assume power for an interim period of 50 days before an election is held.
The Bell 212 helicopter ferrying the state leaders was one of Iran’s military fleet that dates back before the 1979 Islamic revolution. Ebrahim Raisi rose to power as Iran’s eighth president in 2021, succeeding Hassan Rouhani, after an election that registered a low turnout of voters.
Since the early 1980s, he was part of Iran’s ultra-conservative faction – dispensing harsh forms of justice as a judicial officer. During his reign as president, he was a close confidant of Ayatollah Khomeini and took an aggressive stance against the U.S and its Middle East allies such as Israel.
In April this year, Iran fired hundreds of missiles and drones to Israel as retaliation for the murder of its top commander at its Syrian consulate. This was the first time when Tehran was about to openly confront Israel in a war that could disrupt many commercial activities. Iran has for a long time backed the ‘Axis of Resistance’ – a group of armed resistance groups operating within Syria, Iraq, Palestine, Lebanon, and Yemen. A barrage of sanctions have been levelled against Iran by Western countries accusing them of supporting terrorism in the region.
Surprisingly, Iran restored diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia in March last year. This was seen as a positive front in the economic ties between the most powerful nations in the middle east. Raisi was also at the forefront of constructing an oil pipeline between Tehran and Pakistan – a project that the U.S has threatened to sabotage.
Iran has the potential to become one of the world’s greatest exporters of gas after Russia, but sanctions and political tensions have undermined this intent.
The country’s relations with Russia has also undergone criticism. Iran is a major supplier of arms to Moscow’s war effort against Ukraine. Moreover, Ebrahim Raisi defied the 2015 nuclear deal with the U.S, allowing the country to ramp up its nuclear reserves without inspection.
Iran has also been criticized and sanctioned by western nations over its domestic oppression of citizens. President Raisi’s administration cracked down on protestors lamenting the death of Mahsa Amini, a woman killed by the Iranian morality police in September 2022.
Data from the OEC indicates that Kenya mainly imports Asphalt from Iran. On the other hand, Kenya exports beverages such as tea and coffee to the middle east country.
Between January and March last year, tea exports to Iran hit US$ 4 billion. The rising demand helped to assuage the lower sale of the beverage to Kenya’s biggest tea market, Pakistan. However, the total trade volumes between the two countries has not surpassed 5% for many years. For this reason, President Raisi visited Kenya last year in July where an MoU was signed to increase bilateral relations. Iran was sensitized to invest in sectors such as Tourism, Health technology, Livestock and Agriculture, and the Blue economy.
The cause of the helicopter crash is yet to be established. Condolence messages have streamed from various nations including India and Russia. However, the U.S and Israel are yet to respond.
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