Iranian President Ibrahim Riaisei and other top officials died in a helicopter crash Sunday in the mountains of northern Iran.

I was shocked. I couldn't really believe the news alerts that I was reading on my phone.

This is, you know, airplane crashes and helicopter crashes happen, but you know, President Riese was a very, very senior figure within the Iranian political establishment.

That's Yegenay Torbati, a financial investigative reporter for the post who has covered

Iran for years.

And she's been closely following the aftermath of Raise's death. Inside Iran, the government announced five days of national mourning.

The country's allies sent their condolences.

But Yegene says not everyone is grieving.

Raise was seen by many Iranians as a key player. They were showing videos of themselves dancing, buying sweets for themselves and their family,

and handing them out.

They were really quite joyful at the news of Racy's crash and then death.

Yegenay says we can't know how representative those reactions are of

overall public opinion inside of Iran.

But she says they tell us something about how Iran's government is viewed.

It's run ultimately by Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Raise was Iran's top elected official and he was viewed as

Khamenei's potential successor.

For me what's top of mind is sort of what does this mean for Iran in the

medium to long term and in terms of how Iran is run.

And then also I've been looking really closely at sort of the reactions of

Iranians to the death and those reactions I think really tell you a lot about where Iranian

society is vis-à-vis the government.

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