Israeli officials on Monday denied suggestions they were behind the deaths of two of Iran’s most prominent political leaders who died in a helicopter crash over the weekend — but added they wouldn’t “shed a tear” for the losses.
“For us, it does not matter,” said Member of the Israeli Knesset Avigdor Lieberman, chairman of the opposition Yisrael Beiteinu party. “It won’t affect Israel’s attitude [toward Iran]. Iran’s policies are set by the supreme leader [Ayatollah Ali Khamenei].”
Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian were killed in a helicopter crash, leaving the Middle Eastern country without two of its most prominent figures. Their deaths come as international tension and domestic clashes have escalated in Iran.
The men were traveling from Iran’s border with Azerbaijan when their helicopter went down in rugged terrain near the city of Jolfa. Search-and-rescue teams spent five hours cutting through dense forest, rain, and fog before finding the crash site.
Khamenei announced there would be “no disruption” to the government’s work and announced that Vice President Mohammad Mokhber would take over as acting president until an election for a new president could be held.
Middle East experts and analysts said despite Israel and Iran long-held views toward one another, there wasn’t much strategic benefit from Raisi’s death. In Israel, Raisi was largely perceived to be a figurehead who lacked any real power or say on Iran’s foreign policy. The real power in Iran rests with Khamenei and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Despite this, Raisi had been viewed as one of several successors to Khamenei.
“There was no doubt that the president was a brutal man,” Lieberman said. “We won’t shed a tear.”
Sima Shine, a former senior official in the Mossad, Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, who is an analyst at the Institute for National Security Studies in Tel Aviv, told the New York Times that Raisi’s death won’t have any direct impact on Israel-Iran relations.
“The president is not the most important person in Iran,” Shine said.
Meir Javedanfar, an Iranian-Israeli professor at Reichman University in Israel, largely echoed her statement.
“[The president’s] absence or presence” would not have much of an impact, said Javedanfar, who called Raisi “a foot soldier of the supreme leader.” “He was a loyal servant with little influence within the regime.”
Far-right coalition MK Avi Maoz, of the ultraconservative Noam party and a deputy minister in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office, also spoke out.
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“Only less than a month ago, he threatened that ‘if Israel attacks, nothing will be left of it,’ and now he is a grain of dust in history,” Maoz said.
Israel quickly distanced itself from any suggestion that it had a hand in the crash, which Iranian state news media seemed to validate when they announced the helicopter went down due to “technical failure” and bad weather.