Shock and disbelief were the overriding emotions expressed by most Iranians on social media after the news broke that President Ebrahim Raisi’s helicopter crashed in north-western Iran on Sunday afternoon.
Speculation immediately began to spread online as Iranian state media went through their familiar motions of reporting limited and at times contradictory information about the incident.
Some wondered if Raisi and the seven other people on board the helicopter, including Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian and several other senior officials, had died.
Were government officials stalling to prepare an announcement or were they just as in the dark about their fates as the general public? they asked. “He is definitely dead,” one person wrote on X, formerly Twitter.
“They are just buying time so they can manage the crisis.”
There was also conjecture about the cause of the crash, which happened in a remote, mountainous area during heavy fog and rain.
Some asked whether it was simply an accident – the latest incident in Iran’s long history of crashes – or the result of an attack or sabotage.
“You can only find a handful of working aircraft in the entire country,” another X user posted.
“Remember how the hardliners said buying new planes and choppers was luxury and waste?”
But by Sunday evening, there was a tangible shift in the public mood.
