Iran’s cabinet holds new emergency session after President’s death – State media

The Iranian cabinet has convened a second emergency meeting in less than 24 hours following the confirmation of the death of President Ebrahim Raisi.

Local media reported on Monday that the Iranian Vice-President Mohammad Mokhber had already chaired a meeting on Sunday evening after the helicopter went missing with nine people on board over Iran’s north-west.

The report stated that Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian also died in the helicopter crash.

Raisi and Amirabdollahian were travelling back from a meeting with the president of neighbouring Azerbaijan, Ilham Aliyev, when their aircraft disappeared from radar on Sunday afternoon.

According to protocol, with Raisi’s death, Mokhber should assume power, pending approval from Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

New elections will then have to hold within 50 days.

Iran’s cabinet holds new emergency session after President’s death – State media

Helicopter crash claims Iran’s president, foreign minister, 7 others

The President Iran, Ebrahim Raisi has died after a helicopter carrying him and other officials crashed in a mountainous and forested area of the country due to poor weather on Sunday, May 19.

The helicopter, transporting Iran’s President along with the country’s Foreign Minister, Hossein Amirabdollahian, and seven other senior officials, met with disaster in the mountainous northwest region of Iran.

Iran was thrown into uncertainty on Sunday as search and rescue teams scoured a fog-shrouded mountain area after the helicopter went missing.

Fears grew for the 63-year-old ultraconservative after contact was lost with the aircraft. The supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, had urged Iranians to “not worry” about the leadership of the Islamic republic, saying “there will be no disruption in the country’s work”.

“We hope that Almighty God will bring our dear president and his companions back in full health into the arms of the nation,” he said in a nationally televised address as Muslim faithful prayed for Raisi’s safe return.

More than 60 rescue teams using search dogs and drones were sent to the mountainous protected forest area of Dizmar near the town of Varzaghan. The crash site was later discovered and no survivor was found there.
The helicopter crashed weeks after Iran launched a drone-and-missile attack on Israel in response to a deadly strike on its diplomatic compound in Damascus.

Hardliner Raisi became president in a historically uncompetitive election in 2021. Previously as the chief justice, he oversaw a period of intensified repression of dissent in a nation convulsed by youth-led protests against clerical rule.

Raisi was the second-most powerful person in the Islamic Republic’s political structure after its Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khomeini. The Iranian Constitution mandates that, in the case of the president’s death, the first vice president assumes office with the approval of the Supreme Leader.

Helicopter crash claims Iran’s president, foreign minister, 7 others

South Korean president apologises over scandal involving gift to wife

South Korean President Yoon Suk Yeol has apologised for his wife’s decision to accept a luxury handbag as a gift, revelations of which have caused a scandal.

Yoon’s wife, Kim Keon Hee, was secretly filmed by a hidden camera accepting the expensive handbag from a third party.
The ensuing controversy has also politically ensnared the conservative president himself.

Yoon said on Thursday that his wife had behaved unwisely at the time and that her behaviour had caused unrest for which he apologised.

His remarks came at Yoon’s first press conference since August 2022, and several weeks after his party was soundly defeated in April’s general election.

The scandal surrounding the first lady was also seen as one of the factors that helped determine the outcome of the election.

Yoon, who previously served as South Korea’s attorney general, rejected the political opposition’s call for additional special investigations into the handbag scandal.

There are already investigations into the incident, he said, and dismissed calls for a special prosecutor as a “political manoeuvre.”

The YouTube channel Voice of Seoul published a video in November that allegedly shows Kim accepting a designer handbag worth around three million (2. 2 thousands U.S. dollars) from the hands of a pastor in Seoul.

The pastor is said to have worked with the YouTube channel and was wearing a hidden camera on his watch during the meeting with Kim.

The channel had reported Kim on allegations that she had violated the anti-corruption law, although it remains unclear whether she actually violated the law, which would require a direct connection between her behaviour and her husband’s political office.

South Korean president apologises over scandal involving gift to wife