Why would Iran put important people on a single helicopter — and then fly it through mountain fog — to a basically unimportant event?

© 2024 Peter Free

 

20 May 2024

 

 

Cultural stupidity, it seems, is not exclusive to the West

 

Iran has a way of getting its top people killed in foreseeably dumb ways.

 

Most recently, by hazarding its president (Ebrahim Raisi) and foreign minister (Hossein Amir-Abdollahian) — as well as the governor of an East Azerbaijan Province province (Malek Rahmati) and a senior Tabriz city imam — to death in an avoidable helicopter crash.

 

 

Avoidable . . .

 

. . . because the chopper was flying in foggy mountains and likely without instruments.

 

And going to the comparatively unimportant inauguration of a dam.

 

Alaskan bush pilots would laugh at such a brazen invitation to die for poor reasons.

 

 

Iran reportedly blames US economic sanctions for the crash of its Bell 212 chopper

 

But after years-and-years of those sanctions, one wonders why Iran did not proactively replace their American aircraft with Russian or Chinese units.

 

 

As much as I decry pointless US stupidity in attacking Iran, Russia and China

 

I have trouble swallowing President Raisi's death as anything other than a consequence of Iranian recklessness.

 

If you know 'them guys' are out to get you — why make things easier for them?

 

 

The moral? — Hubris, the root of much evil and misfortune

 

'In sha Allah' doesn't cut it, when cloying complacence actively invites bad things to happen.