Hossein Amirabdollahian, Iranian foreign minister, dies in crash aged 60
Al Jazeera
The diplomat perished in the helicopter crash that also killed President Ebrahim Raisi on Sunday.
Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian has died at the age of 60 in a helicopter crash alongside President Ebrahim Raisi.
The crash occurred on Sunday, but it took search teams several hours to find the site of the wreckage in Iran’s mountainous East Azerbaijan province and confirm that the occupants of the aircraft had all died.
Amirabdollahian had been attending the inauguration of two dams near the border with Azerbaijan, where Raisi met its president, Ilham Aliyev.
The top diplomat had been appointed to his position by Raisi after the latter won the 2021 presidential election. The appointment was representative of a wider shift in Iran’s politics as the focus moved from negotiations with the West to renewed attention on regional relations. Amirabdollahian had previously focused on relations with the Arab world and Africa.
Like many within Raisi’s cabinet, Amirabdollahian came to office after the unilateral United States withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear deal, known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), between Iran and world powers. As a result, increased Western sanctions bit deeper into the country’s economy.
