Iran president dead as helicopter wreckage found on mountain with 'no signs of life'

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi has died aged 63 after a horror helicopter crash.The leader died, along with Iran's foreign minister and other officials in a crash on Sunday in northwestern Iran.Mr Raisi helped oversee the mass executions of thousands in 1988 and later led the country as it enriched uranium near weapons-grade levels and launched a major drone-and-missile attack on Israel.Iranian State Media confirmed the news that there was "no sign of life" from the leader after the wreckage of the crash was discovered.Iran's Mehr agency reported: “The president of the Islamic Republic of Iran, Ayatollah Ebrahim Raisi, had an accident while serving and performing his duty for the people of Iran and was martyred," the Mirror reports.A cleric first, Mr Raisi once kissed the Quran, the Islamic holy book, before the United Nations and spoke more like a preacher than a statesman when addressing the world.Mr Raisi, who earlier lost a presidential election to the relatively moderate incumbent Hassan Rouhani in 2017, ended up coming to power four years later in a vote carefully managed by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to clear any major opposition candidate.His arrival came after Mr Rouhani's signature nuclear deal with world powers remained in tatters after former US president Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew America from the accord, setting in motion years of renewed tensions between Tehran and Washington.But while saying he wanted to rejoin the deal, Mr Raisi's new administration instead pushed back against international inspections, in part over an ongoing suspected sabotage campaign carried out by Israel targeting its nuclear programme.Talks in Vienna at restoring the accord remained stalled in his government's