the crash of Ebrahim Raïssi’s helicopter reveals a country between modernity and dilapidated

As the funeral of President Raïssi, killed on Sunday May 19 in a helicopter crash, is being prepared, the world realizes that this feared military power had no other means than an old, worn-out helicopter from the 1970s to transport its president.

Considering Iran, we may be surprised by the contrast between the impression of modernity left by the drones which targeted Israel in April and the old, worn-out helicopter which transported President Ebrahim Raïssi, who died in a crash on Sunday May 19, 2024.

We can almost summarize the long history of the isolation of the Iranian regime through these two news items. The helicopter in which Ebrahim Raïssi was traveling was a Bell 214, the military version of an American-made model that the United States already used during the Vietnam War. An antiquity recovered in 1979 by the Islamic Revolution, after the fall of the Shah, a date which marked the start of the confrontation between Iran and the West.

At this time, Washington decided on the first sanctions against Tehran. This embargo, which has lasted for 45 years, has continued to harden, making maintenance, access to spare parts, or quite simply the renewal of Iranian means of transport impossible. The state of the Islamic Republic’s aviation is undoubtedly the most eloquent example, because the crash of Ebrahim Raïssi’s helicopter is added to a long list of air disasters. According to the latest available study, nearly fifteen crashes occurred between 2000 and 2010. The last known accident dates back to May 2022, with an F5 fighter, an American aircraft leaving the factory in the early 1960s.

Although Iranian equipment is totally obsolete, Iran is still considered a great military power. This hypermilitarization is based precisely on this isolation. The Iranians under embargo knew very quickly that they were going to have to think differently. It was the first country to begin manufacturing drones in the early 1980s. This technology has revolutionized military strategies in recent years and above all made it possible to reduce the costs of war.

In April, at the time of the Iranian drone raid on Israel, this expert from the Carnegie Council of New York explained to the Deutsche Welle : “You don’t need a very expensive system or complicated weapons, systems generally subject to sanctions or trade constraints. You just need the same material as for toys. On this point, Iran has done the bet that a simple, slow technology that flies low would be just as effective. And that’s what gave them a head start on their adversaries.”

This unprecedented attack by 300 Iranian drones gave the image of a massively equipped Iranian army at the cutting edge of war technology. But the drones used against Israel were not the most modern. Tehran wants to stay one step ahead and does not reveal its latest models. And above all, the regime needs to sell to its allies: Russia, Syria, Venezuela. The Shahed 136 drones are highly sought after and offer short breathing space to the Iranian government, increasingly suffocated by American sanctions.