Helicopter crash that killed Iran’s president and others could reverberate across the Middle East

By JOSEPH KRAUSS
Associated Press

JERUSALEM (AP) — The helicopter crash in which Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, the country’s foreign minister and other officials were killed is likely to reverberate across the Middle East, where Iran’s influence runs wide and deep. That’s because Iran has spent decades supporting armed groups and militants in Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Yemen and the Palestinian territories, allowing it to project power and potentially deter any attack from the United States or Israel, the sworn enemies of its 1979 Islamic Revolution. Tensions have soared since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, and Israel and Iran directly traded fire for the first time ever last month.