(Iranian Air Force Bell 412 Helicopter. Image courtesy Airliners.com)

This messaging was just in over the last two news cycles. We don’t claim to fully understand it. Old Salt Jake leaned across the picnic table, placing his tablet aside his plate of scrambled eggs. He pointed down at the glowing screen and said: “I’ve been following this over night. The latest this morning is that “Search and Rescue teams worked in a “blizzard” through their Iranian night. The announcement this morning is that they discovered the bodies of President Raisi and Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian in the wreckage with seven others, They are being transported to the city of Tabriz.”

Rocket was just up from his bunk and blinking. He was looking intently at his Nokia phone. “There has been an outpouring of sympathy from regional players like Syria and Jordan. And Russia, to whom Raisi had been sending weapons when not launching rockets at Jerusalem.”

Splash was at his usual seat at the far end of The Patio outside the Socotra Headquarters suite. He looked a little pensive in an old t-shirt made in the region a few decades ago. “Multiple people have taken to social media to celebrate Raisi’s passing. That is where the messaging gets complicated,” he said. “Photos of the area where the helicopter crashed on the NYT website shows very heavy fog. Other news reports cite bad weather, fog and mountains. I would bet “controlled flight into terrain” is a leading candidate for cause. Also, AP News reports the helicopter was a Bell 412 dating from the Shah’s time, So, maintenance and spare parts could also be issues.”

Rocket laughed. “CFIT or something else.” He took a sip of the dark liquid in the fancy short glass in front of him before waving his phone. “Yesterday they just said the President’s helicopter was missing and they were not able to locate it.”

(Ebrahim Raisi, 63, a Shia religious cleric, was elected President of Iran in 2021).

DeMille peered down the table over a pyramid he constructed with his hands. “In his tenure as President, Raisi had overseen a strategy to expand Iran’s regional influence. He backed militant proxies across the Middle East, expediting the country’s nuclear program and bringing the country to the brink of war with Israel.” He put his phone down on the table. “And yeah, I’m sure someone will bring up possible sabotage. That is possible, but not as likely as the possible causes they are talking about.”

Rocket cocked his head and threw up his hands. “Like, whether it is internal or external!”

We agreed to not think about it further and concentrate on the glass jug slowly working its way around the rustic aluminum table. Like all the messaging streams, there seemed to at least be a common element of fact with which to start. This is an incident of public notice and has been widely reported. That, of course, is where the paths diverge. The start of another branch to a sequel of an older story.

Our personal relation to that goes back to the time of our Older Salts. When we were still training Iranian fighter pilots at NAS Pensacola.

The Iranian Revolution is another thing we don’t claim to understand. There is an element of religious fervor in it, of course, with the ongoing struggle within Islam between Shia and Sunni sects. That is what the image below came from on Splash’s t-shirt.

(One of the Salts designed this shirt and had it manufactured in Olongapo in the the Philippines. He has apologized.)

(This image was about Iranian fashion in 1970. They both could be arrested for inappropriate attire these days and hope they would not be killed for the offense).

Protester Mahmoud Mehrabi was arrested in March 2023 charged with “corruption on earth,” for a protest like the one above in 2022. He was one of many protesting the Guidance Patrol (Gasht-e-Ershad) killing of a young woman over her decision to wear what they claimed was an “inappropriate” hijab. Courts just sentanced him to death for the protests, so you can see there are some things happening there that are incompatible with the more funamental Rhetoric spouted here, of all places. .

That is some fundamental energy festooned atop the rich pageant of Persian history. Some of us collected the woven art in bright intricate carpets for years, so we appreciate the culture. At least part of it. Some of the confusion of our Iranian policy is the same way in the time we have personally been looking at it.

Some of us are frozen in perspective like Splash in his shirt from the Hostage Crisis of 1979. He was part of the response and has a mental bias framed in those times. But there was more to the story that included a vibrant secular society in Persian terms. A vibrant one before the Ayatollahs came to power.

We have followed recent events with a simmering resentment toward Iran’s various proxy surrogate waging war against Israel, and marvel at the demonstrations for Hamas on our campuses. Accordingly, the headlines today caused a disturbance,

Possibilities? There are two, the latter with sequences. “Accident, possibly weather, pilot error or maintenance failure.” That appears to be the preferred messaging this morning, Then there is an alternative, “Assassination, by local or external forces.” You can see the latter branches off rapidly.

We are not going to think any further since that could get us in trouble with Legal and Management. In the meantime, it will be interesting to see how the messaging goes from this point. We regret any loss of life. We will see if this leads to more.

Copyright 2024 Vic Scooter
www.vicsocotra.com