Ready Reckoner For Killing – The Raisi Assassination

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Yves here. Putin volunteered in a recent interview that it was odd that Raisi took his fatal trip in an old American helicopter, which due to sanctions would be difficult to maintain, while the other two helicopters that made the same trip were fairly new, well-kitted out, Russian made birds.

By John Helmer, the longest continuously serving foreign correspondent in Russia, and the only western journalist to direct his own bureau independent of single national or commercial ties. Helmer has also been a professor of political science, and an advisor to government heads in Greece, the United States, and Asia. He is the first and only member of a US presidential administration (Jimmy Carter) to establish himself in Russia. Originally published at Dances with Bears

It was a frustrated Sherlock Holmes who told Dr Watson: “You will not apply my precept,” he said, shaking his head. “How often have I said to you that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”

That was in 1890 in the Arthur Conan Doyle story, “The Sign of Four”.

Application of this Holmes rule of detection and deduction to the circumstances of the crash of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi’s helicopter on May 19 is now producing the inescapable conclusion that Raisi, Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian,  and the six others  on board their aircraft were killed by the actions of one or both of the pilots, who intended their own suicide and the killing of their passengers.

This appears not to have been the conclusion of the Iranian Air Force commanders who paid a condolence visit to the families of the pilots on May 21, two days after their deaths.

But with the release last week by the Iranian Army’s General Staff of its second report on the fatal crash, the elimination of weather, machine failure, external missile attack, on-board bomb, electronic sabotage, and pilot navigational error is now complete. Together with the first General Staff report,    the detailed Teheran television interview of Raisi’s chief of staff, Gholam-Hossein Esmaeili,  and the eyewitness testimony by telephone from the crash scene by the Tabriz ayatollah,  Mohammad Ali Al-Hashem,  the evidence remaining is that the highly experienced chief pilot, Colonel Seyed Taher Mostafavi (lead image, right) made three mistakes — the first, to fly into the cloud bank after he ordered the others to climb above; the second, not to detect on his radar and other instruments the sharp mountain peaks in close proximity to his flight course at 2,200 metres; and the third, to crash in horizontal orientation, not vertically nose first.

Hattricks are rare, but they are never mistakes, never accidental.

To catch up on the forensic details as they were initially confirmed for the fatal incident, read this piece of May 27.

For a summary of the contradictory media reporting from Iranian military and other local sources, assembled by an anti-regime source in London, click to read.   Israeli fabrication and disinformation on the incident is of decidedly lower quality than the Iranian propaganda; click to compare.

OVERVIEW OF THE HELICOPTER CONVOY ROUTE

Source: https://thecradle.co/

SATELLITE VIEW OF THE CLOUD COVER OF THE ROUTE AND CRASH SITE

Source: https://www.iranintl.com
Iran International, an anti-regime medium based in London and Washington, financed by Saudis, concluded its coverage on May 23 with an account of contradictory media reports. This piece reached no conclusions, and so far it has not been updated.   

In the state news agency report,  published late on May 29, the Army investigators concluded “based on sampling and tests conducted on the wreckage and parts of the helicopter, as well as the distribution pattern of the debris from the main body, the occurrence of an explosion caused by sabotage during the flight and moments before the impact with the mountainside is ruled out, the report said. Additionally, investigators carefully examined the vast majority of the documents related to the maintenance of the helicopter and found no issue that could have played a role in the accident, it added.”

“The report also revealed that the helicopter’s capacity in terms of the maximum standard load it could carry at the point of take-off and throughout the flight path and the return route was found to have been within the ‘permissible limit.’  The recorded conversations between the flight crew show that the last contact with the pilots up to the time of the incident and when they stopped responding lasted 69 seconds, and no emergency declaration was recorded during that time, it added.”

“The military investigators also ruled out any disruption in the communication system or frequency interference with the helicopter. They revealed that during the flight and up to 69 seconds before the crash, contact with the aircraft had been maintained on the specified frequencies. The report further said that there were no signs of any cyberattack carried out against the presidential helicopter.”

What is missing from the second Army report is the radar and black-box records of whether in the last 69 seconds there was a bearing or course change by Mostafavi at the controls of the president’s aircraft. In the Army’s first report, it was claimed “the helicopter has already continued on the predicted path and has not departed from the designated flight path.”

A western military aviation expert refers to the training manual for the Bell 212 model of helicopter in which Raisi was travelling. This source says that the technical data the Army will have checked but have yet to reveal, include:

— altitude of the convoy when Mostafavi gave the order to climb above the clouds

— speed of the aircraft at that time

— course and bearing of the front and rear aircraft

— record of course deviation by the Raisi aircraft in the final 69 seconds

— altimeter specifications in the Bell-212 helicopter

— technical factors explaining why Raisi’s aircraft did not gain altitude after Mostafavi gave the climb order to the convoy.

From the geographical coordinates published for the crash site, the altitude at which the crash occurred has been estimated at 2,200 metres.

Left, drone image above the crash site. Right, video from rescuer at ground level which appears to show the body of Al-Hashem clear of the crash debris.   

This is how the eyewitness in the third helicopter, behind Raisi’s aircraft, described the altitude, cloud and weather conditions: “Esmaeili:..There was fog on the ground, but not in up the air where we were advancing with the helicopters. However, in one small compacted area, there was a small patch of clouds above a cliff. In terms of height, this cloud was at the same height as our flight’s height. It was there that the now-martyred helicopter pilot [Mostafavi], who was also the commander of the fleet, told the rest of the pilots to ascend above the clouds. We were third behind the president’s helicopter. We rose above the clouds and advanced for approximately 30 seconds. Our pilot suddenly realized that the main helicopter carrying the president was missing.”

Esmaeili said the pilot of his aircraft estimated that 90 seconds had elapsed between the radio contact of Mostafavi giving the order to climb above the cloud bank and the “disappearance”. “…we also have no radio contact with it anymore. So I asked him when was the last time contact was made? The pilot answered, ‘A minute and 30 seconds ago when the pilot [Mostafavi] told us to ascend above the clouds.’”

Esmaeili is explicit. It had been Mostafavi who had been at the controls of Raisi’s aircraft and who gave the order to the others to climb above the cloud.

Esmaeili also revealed the direct testimony of Al-Hashem, who was thrown clear of the helicopter fuselage at the crash and was not reached by the fire which consumed the other passengers in the cabin. “After some tries, calling the cellphone of the captain [Mostafavi] accompanying the president, someone picked up the phone. It was Ayatollah Hashem, the Friday Imam of Tabriz. He told us that he was not feeling well. He didn’t tell us anything special. I asked him what exactly had happened. He told us that he didn’t know what had happened, and when asked about his whereabouts, he said that he didn’t know. He only described what he could see, described to us what he saw, for example, how he was surrounded by trees. I asked him about the condition of the others, the Ayatollah replied that he’s alone and couldn’t see anyone else and he’s alone.”

In Esmaeili’s account, he and others were able to speak to Al-Hashem over a three-to-four hour period. The telephone which Al-Hashem answered was Mostafavi’s, according to Esmaeili.  

The western aviation source comments: “We can be certain that there was no noticeable or alarming acceleration due to increasing throttle, a dive, or both. We have Al-Hashem’s last communications verifying this,  as well as 90 seconds of no radio traffic which in an emergency of this kind typically includes cries for help or other chatter identifying a struggle in the cockpit. This makes me wonder if the crew had made a pact.”

“We assume the [Bell] 212 was cruising at 190kph. The final communication with the pilot was 90 seconds before the crash. The math tells me that in those 90 seconds the 212 flew 4,769m horizontally. We don’t know the altitude of the group before the order to climb was given, but we do know the service ceiling of the 212 is 5300m, so there was plenty of capacity to get above the 2200m height of the mountain where the aircraft ended up.”

“The 212 is equipped with a radio altimeter. This equipment generally stops giving height indications at 2500ft/ 762m. We have no evidence [from Al-Hashem] that the altimeter sounded off or that any of the flight crew or passengers heard it before the crash. The altimeter could have been disabled. By the looks of the crash site, the 212 didn’t hit a sheer cliff or steep mountainside, so we can expect that the altimeter would have sounded before collision if it had been working and/or been monitored.”

“Now, the key thing is  that the pilot ordered the other two helicopters to climb, while he did not. He flew into the clouds.  Did he descend, or just fly into the mountain at 190kph? Did he know that on his current course the altimeter, if it was working, would not sound due to the slope of the terrain until it was too late to change course? The Army says there was no course change during the flight, but did the pilot, instead of descending into the clouds, change course while maintaining altitude after entering the cloud cover, thus hitting the mountain. This would explain the calmness of all on board.”

“The pilot knew exactly what he was doing.”

Suspicion of pilot suicide in an assassination plot has not been reported in the Iranian domestic media, in the two Army reports, or in the Iranian opposition media outside the country. Nor has it surfaced in the Russian military blogs.

There appears to have been no suspicion of the two pilots, Mostafavi and Colonel Mohsen Daryanosh,   in the first days after the incident when their families and homes were visited by Brigadier General Hamid Vahedi, the Iranian Air Force commander, and Brigadier General Massoud Jafari, commander of Shahid Lashgari Air Base.

Source: https://www.presstv.ir/

How and why Mostafavi gave his personal telephone to Ayatollah Al-Hashem before the flight began is an unanswered question. In the circumstances now, so too is the question of what evidence Mostafavi left on his telephone, if any.

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14 comments

  1. Louis Fyne

    For argument’s sake….

    what good is it if you’re Mossad and take out Raisi and don’t take credit for it?

    Raisi was a known-known and overturning the chess pieces makes no sense…..even for an unhinged admin. like in Israel.

    I presume that the old helicopter was chosen by random out of the three as a security measure, and the idea of an overconfident executive pilot/surgeon/widget-driver is not unheard of. (see Tenerife disaster)

    But then again…of course of all the countries in the area that Israel/Mossad operate freely….it’s Azerbijian.

  2. rick shapiro

    Have you forgotten that Conan Doyle believed in fairies, and that he refused to believe Houdini’s assurance that he had no real supernatural powers? The history of science shows repeatedly that when you have eliminated the impossible, and whatever remains is highly improbable, then you are suffering from a failure of imagination. It is certainly not unlikely that, when one realizes that he has just made a dangerous mistake, he will be in a state to make further mistakes.

  3. .Tom

    Reminds me of EgyptAir 990.

    Why does Helmer say it was assassination? That seems likely but is it known?

  4. The Rev Kev

    Somebody should ask Kobe Bryant’s helicopter pilot for his expertise in flying into hazardous conditions. But you would need a Ouija board to do so. We will probably never know the exact cause of that crash. Perhaps the pilot got distracted by watching those other two helicopters climb so that he would not get into a mid-air with either of them but when he looked back down, he was in a fog. Who can tell? He did not survive so cannot tell us. In reading this, I was reminded of a true incident from a book that I read.

    This guy in England back in the 50s went away for awhile one winter and when he got back, was disturbed to see scorch marks on his wall in crescent shapes. He called in the Fire Brigade and they soon worked out what happened. The sun would shine in the window where it hit a reflective mirror and it was concentrated on the wall opposite burning it and as the sun shifted, the burn marked followed hence the curved burn marks. The officer remarked that if it had been summer time, the stronger rays would have actually set off a fire taking out the entire house and thus burning up all evidence of the cause. And I regret to say that this is probably true of this helicopter crash as well.

  5. ciroc

    Is it possible to bribe/intimidate the Marine One pilots into crashing the helicopter carrying Biden? Of course, only in fiction.

  6. T Deemer

    I was a UH-1H recovery crew chief in RVN, 1968 (no radar, radio altimeter or dual engines in those days). Each main rotor blade has a Tip Cap and Cover with a fine trim weight/tracking blade (also used for tie-down) on the far end. One of our ships radioed about their helicopter hopping off the ground at start-up. Unbelieving, we cranked it up and, at a rotor speed well below ground idle, the ship began hopping from one skid to the other. After shutdown I attempted to hook the tie-down and discovered the tracking blade, which only weighed several ounces, had been thrown off.

    Imagine the result had that happened in flight.

    1. Amfortas the Hippie

      and stevie ray vaughn.
      my youngest went on his senior band trip to NYC last week…and i was on tenterhooks the whole time he was in the air,lol.
      i’ll never set foot in an airport, nor fly, again.
      (as if they would let me…afaik, i’m still on a no-fly list)

  7. steppenwolf fetchit

    One hopes more helicopter pilots and helicopterologists offer comments here. How likely is it that outside country assassination-planners could reach into this heavily secured a part of the Iranian government system?

    Mr. Helmer is offering a politics-based analysis of why this had to be an assassination suicide-homicide flight. If security around flights carrying very important inner-circle government figures in Iran is good, that would mean that only a trusted insider ( like that pilot?) could carry this out. If that pilot had not been long-ago “reached” by Israel or somebody, then would he have a “domestic” reason for doing this?

    I have heard that decades ago, a younger Mr. Raisi was involved in the mass murder of thousands of political prisoners and detainees during the early days of the Ayatollah Khomeini government consolidating its power through exterminating its potential political opponents. What if one of the mass-murdered had been a member of the pilot’s extended family? What if members of the pilot’s family had been murdered more recently by Raisi-allied or adjacent forces during more recent bouts of unhappiness in Iran? What if the pilot has been nursing a desire for vengeance against Raisi and Raisi-adjacent persons for years and took an opportunity handed to him by the luck of scheduling and conditions?

    I have read and heard that rising numbers of Iranians are coming to regard their current government and its personnel the way that many Myanmarese have come to view their current government and its personnel. If large and growing numbers of Iranians consider their government to be a sort of ” Tatmullahdaw”, will they reach a breaking point of no return the way this pilot perhaps did?

  8. MareemaMama

    I don’t know, but the timing if the crash is suspicious. Especially, coming on the heels of the Fico shooting. Logically, there doesn’t seem to be any evidence but . . .

  9. Benjamin Efekodo

    This analysis I believe is more than suspicious conspiracy, the timing for one thing is too close to Iranian sending missiles into Israel.
    The man was murdered and America and Israel cannot deny their involvement.
    There’s no law that can exonerate both of them.

  10. MFB

    Pilot error is perfectly possible, but if the commander of the flight orders the other two aircraft to take avoidance action in a case of mountainous cloud cover, and then does not follow his own orders and instead crashes, well, that seems to rule out pilot error to me.

    I don’t see Helmer demonstrating any political guilty party here, just pointing out what seems to have happened.

Comments are closed.