All right, Alexander, let's talk about the helicopter crash in the northwest of Iran with President Raisi, the foreign minister and other government officials who were on that helicopter, and this morning it was announced that there were no survivors in that helicopter crash. So what are your

first thoughts on this tragedy? Well, first of all, it is a tragedy and one has to be,

one has to think of the families of these people. I mean, they're all got families. And, you know,

this is any deaths like this is a tragedy for those involved and obviously for their families as well.

Now, having said that, we have to move on. These are political people. And there's a number of things about this particular incident that I do not understand. This is apparently an old

helicopter. Some say that it dates back to the 1970s. You know, Bell helicopter bought at the time

when Iran was, you know, allied with the United States under the Shah of Iran.

You place your president and your foreign minister in a helicopter, which then flies across the border from Azerbaijan,

across rugged, mountainous territory at a time when there's mist and fog and bad rain and bad

weather conditions. Something, some major act of negligence, I mean, it clearly was negligence,

but some major act of negligence took place here.

And one wonders how such a thing was possible or how it was allowed to happen.

I would have thought that at the very least, they would wait a little to try to get,

you know, try to wait for the weather to clear.

And if we're talking about helicopters, they're much more powerful, far more modern helicopters

that Iran could have bought from Russia or China, and which could have been available to

Iran for many years, actually, even before the sanctions were

lifted and all that, which they could have used. So, I mean, you know, there is some kind of a story

here that, you know, one doesn't really understand. But let's look at the political situation

in Iran. Now, it's important to say that though Raizi is the elected president of Iran,

he is not its leader. The leader of Iran is Ayatollah Hamene. He directs Iran's foreign and security

policies. He is the person who is an overall control. He is still

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