The entire nation was keeping an eagle eye on the situation after the news about the presidential helicopter’s "hard landing" was broken, Foad Izadi, associate professor at the Department of American Studies, Faculty of World Studies, University of Tehran, told Sputnik.
"Last night I was going to television stations and on my way to the stations, and coming back home, I was seeing people in different squares gathering, praying for him [Raisi]," Izadi said.
"People are, of course, concerned - people who voted for him, of course, liked him, people who did not vote for him, don't want to see the president of a country passing away in this manner," according to the pundit.
Reflecting on what could cause the crash, Izadi singled out bad weather conditions, technical troubles and an act of sabotage.
"It could be the weather - the weather was very bad yesterday in that region, it could be a malfunction of the helicopter, or it could be sabotage. If it's sabotage, then it's going to have serious consequences internationally," the associate professor pointed out.
President Raisi "was also liked by many outside Iran because of his support for Palestinian cause, because of his culture of resistance against American imperialism. So I think […] he will he remembered by many people outside Iran," Izadi concluded.
The Iranian Foreign Ministry has, meanwhile, expressed "sincere" gratitude towards the whole array of countries and international organizations that had either expressed solidarity with the Islamic Republic or offered to provide assistance following the incident.
The Iranian president’s helicopter made a "hard landing" on May 19 after it got into trouble in heavy fog near the city of Jolfa, some 600 kilometers (375 miles) northwest of the capital Tehran.
Raisi was heading to the city of Tabriz in northwestern Iran, after returning from a ceremony to inaugurate a dam on the Aras River in the Iran-Azerbaijan border area with Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev. Three helicopters were in the convoy, and the two others, which carried Iranian Energy Minister Ali Akbar Mehrabian and Housing and Transportation Minister Mehrdad Bazrpash, reached destination without problems.