Iranian Red Crescent / AFP
South Africa's President Cyril Ramaphosa, who recently invited Iran to join the BRICS group, expressed deep regret Monday over the death of President Ayatollah Ebrahim Raisi in a helicopter crash.
"This is an extraordinary, unthinkable tragedy that has claimed a remarkable leader of a nation with whom South Africa enjoys strong bilateral relations," Ramaphosa said.
Ramaphosa visited Iran as deputy president in 2015 and in 2023 welcomed Raisi to a summit of the BRICS group in Johannesburg, where the Islamic republic was formally invited to join.
Iran became a full member of the intergovernmental forum in January, along with Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia and the United Arab Emirates.
Always piously dressed in a black turban and religious robe, Iran's ultraconservative President Ebrahim Raisi took office during a tumultuous period of confrontation abroad and mass protest at home.
On Monday, the 63-year-old president was declared dead after his helicopter crashed a day earlier in a remote and fog-shrouded western mountain region while travelling back from East Azerbaijan province where he had inaugurated a dam project.
After the news of his death, state television showed photos of Raisi with the voice of a man reciting the Koran in the background and footage of faithful praying in Raisi's home city.
Search and rescue operations went on for more than 15 hours after the crash, before the site was found and Raisi's body was retrieved along with others who had died with him.
The Iranian president -- whose career started in the years after the 1979 Islamic revolution and who is close to supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei -- took power in a 2021 election that was followed by turbulent years of protests and tensions.
Like Khamenei, Raisi has often spoken up defiantly as Iran, the biggest Shiite Muslim power, has been in a tense standoff with its declared arch foes the United States and Israel.
Raisi took power after an election in which more than half the electorate stayed away and several political heavyweights had been barred from standing.
He succeeded the moderate Hassan Rouhani, whose signature achievement was a 2015 nuclear deal with world powers that gave Iran relief from international sanctions.
Like other ultraconservatives, Raisi harshly criticised his predecessor's camp after then-president Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the nuclear pact in 2018 and reimposed punishing sanctions on Iran.
Raisi took the reins of a country in social and economic crisis.
© Agence France-Presse
