Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country’s foreign minister and several other officials were found dead on Monday, hours after their helicopter crashed in a foggy, mountainous region of the country’s northwest, state media reported. The crash comes as the Middle East remains unsettled by the Israel-Hamas war, during which Raisi, who was 63, under Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei launched an unprecedented drone-and-missile attack on Israel just last month. During Raisi's term in office, Iran enriched uranium closer than ever to weapons-grade levels, further escalating tensions with the West as Tehran also supplied bomb-carrying drones to Russia for its war in Ukraine and armed militia groups across the region.
That’s what my first thoughts were as well, but they were flying in some pretty nasty weather. Thick fog, high winds, in a remote forested mountain range. While it is entirely possible that the CIA and IDF may have collaborated on some impromptu helicopter modifications, I think the question is less “Who could have done this?” and is more “Why were they flying in those conditions?”
True, the weather was really bad in that area, but he was traveling in a 3-helicopter convoy, and only his helicopter crashed. Now, I’m not saying that it’s impossible, or even improbable that it was an accident, but we can’t really rule out sabotage at this point, especially considering how big of a target he had on his head from both the US and Israel. Personally, I really hope it was an accident. I mean, I shed no tears for that son of a bitch, but the ramifications if this was an assassination are unsettling.
We can’t rule it out, but Occam’s razor says we should think of it as an accident right up until the moment where we find evidence for sabotage and an accident isn’t enough anymore to explain it.
The parallels with Kobe’s death are pretty eerie
Definitely!
Widely regarded as one of the greatest players in the history of the sport, Iranian president Ebrahim Raisi won five NBA championships and was an 18-time All-Star, a 15-time member of the All-NBA Team, a 12-time member of the All-Defensive Team, the 2008 NBA Most Valuable Player (MVP), and a two-time NBA Finals MVP.
This is the first time since joining Lemmy that I miss awards. This was funny as hell! Thanks for the chuckle.
Kobe wasn’t involved in an almost sort of war with Israel though.
He was still young.
They would have won even more championships if Shaq hadn’t insisted on eating non-halal meat during team meetings. You could cut the tension with a knife.
I’m not going to dispute your clearly superior knowledge of basketball statistics, and those are all remarkable parallels, but I think it’s more likely they were referring to the helicopter crash.