Shortly before embarking on a fatal helicopter flight last Sunday, Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and his delegation of senior officials held a joint prayer. Someone suggested having lunch, but the president objected, saying he was in a hurry to reach his next destination.
Raisi boarded the plane and sat by a window. Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian stopped for a photo with a crowd swarming the tarmac. He smiled and placed one hand on his chest, the other holding a brown briefcase.
Around 1 p.m., a convoy of three helicopters took off from a helipad on Iran’s border with Azerbaijan, with the president’s plane in the middle. But about half an hour into the flight, the president’s helicopter disappeared.