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Ebrahim Raisi, whose helicopter crashed in the northwest of Iran on Sunday, was both the President of Iran and a candidate jockeying to succeed the elderly actual ruler of the country, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei. Both political positions carried an elevated risk level roughly comparable with that of traveling by air inside Iran—where aviation safety, compromised by decades of sanctions and uneven maintenance, has claimed the lives of almost as many senior Iranian officials as its shadow war with Israel, which also loomed over Raisi’s reported demise. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The cause of the crash—which also killed Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, the governor of Iran’s East Azerbaijan province, and others—is pending investigation.

Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman postponed a planned four-day trip to Japan due to concerns over the king’s health, Japan’s top government spokesman Yoshimasa Hayashi said. The trip set to start Monday was to have been the crown prince’s first visit to Japan since 2019. Hayashi said at a regular news briefing in Tokyo the two nations would reschedule the visit, without indicating when.

New Taiwan President William Lai Ching-te urged China to stop its intimidation of the democratic island, comments aimed at calming a dispute at the heart of a geopolitical rivalry involving the world’s two biggest powers. “I call on China to stop intimidating Taiwan verbally and militarily, and, together with Taiwan, to shoulder our responsibility to the world to do our utmost to maintain peace and stability in the Taiwan Strait and the region,” Lai said Monday in his inaugural address on an overcast day in Taipei.

DUBAI, United Arab Emirates— A helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country’s foreign minister and other officials apparently crashed in the mountainous northwest reaches of Iran on Sunday, sparking a massive rescue operation in a fog-shrouded forest as the public was urged to pray. [time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”] The likely crash came as Iran under Raisi and Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei launched an unprecedented drone-and-missile attack on Israel last month and has enriched uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels. Iran has also faced years of mass protests against its Shiite theocracy over an ailing economy and women’s rights — making the moment that much more sensitive for Tehran and the future of the country as the Israel-Hamas war inflames the wider Middle East. Raisi was traveling in Iran’s East Azerbaijan province.

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