VOA News on Iran

A helicopter carrying Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi suffered a "hard landing" on Sunday, Iranian state media reported, without immediately elaborating.

Raisi was traveling in Iran's East Azerbaijan province. State TV said the incident happened near Jolfa, a city on the border with the nation of Azerbaijan, some 600 kilometers (375 miles) northwest of the Iranian capital, Tehran.

Traveling with Raisi were Iran's Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian, the governor of Iran's East Azerbaijan province and other officials, the state-run IRNA news agency reported. One local government official used the word "crash" to describe the incident, but he acknowledged to an Iranian newspaper that he had yet to reach the site himself.

Neither IRNA nor state TV offered any information on Raisi's condition.

Rescuers were attempting to reach the site, state TV said, but had been hampered by poor weather conditions. There had been heavy rain and fog reported with some wind. IRNA called the area a "forest."

Raisi had been in Azerbaijan early Sunday to inaugurate a dam with Azerbaijan's President Ilham Aliyev. The dam is the third one that the two nations built on the Aras River. The visit came despite chilly relations between the two nations, including over a gun attack on Azerbaijan's Embassy in Tehran in 2023, and Azerbaijan's diplomatic relations with Israel, which Iran's Shiite theocracy views as its main enemy in the region.

Iran flies a variety of helicopters in the country, but international sanctions make it difficult to obtain parts for them. Its military air fleet also largely dates back to before the 1979 Islamic Revolution.

Raisi, 63, is a hard-liner who formerly led the country's judiciary. He is viewed as a protégé of Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and some analysts have suggested he could replace the 85-year-old leader after his death or resignation from the role.

Raisi won Iran's 2021 presidential election, a vote that saw the lowest turnout in the Islamic Republic's history. Raisi is sanctioned by the U.S. in part over his involvement in the mass execution of thousands of political prisoners in 1988 at the end of the bloody Iran-Iraq war.

Under Raisi, Iran now enriches uranium at nearly weapons-grade levels and hampers international inspections. Iran has armed Russia in its war on Ukraine, as well as launched a massive drone-and-missile attack on Israel amid its war against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. It also has continued arming proxy groups in the Mideast, like Yemen's Houthi rebels and Lebanon's Hezbollah.

Jailed Iranian Nobel Peace Prize winner Narges Mohammadi faces a new trial over accusations she made against security forces of sexually assaulting female prisoners, her family said Saturday.

The trial, due to begin Sunday, relates to an audio message she shared from prison in April with supporters in which she decried a "full-scale war against women" in the Islamic Republic.

She is charged in this latest case with making "propaganda against the regime," the family said.

There has been no comment on the case by Iranian judicial authorities.

Her family quoted Mohammadi as saying that the trial should be held in public so "witnesses and survivors can testify to the sexual assaults perpetrated by the Islamic Republic regime against women."

Mohammadi, who is held in Tehran's Evin prison, urged Iranian women in her April message via her Instagram page to share their stories of arrest and sexual assault at the hands of the authorities.

She pointed to the case of journalist and student Dina Ghalibaf, who, according to rights groups, was arrested after accusing security forces on social media of handcuffing and sexually assaulting her during a previous arrest at a metro station. Ghalibaf was later released.

The authorities in Iran have in recent weeks intensified a crackdown obliging women to obey the country's Islamic dress code, notably making use of video surveillance.

Mohammadi has been incarcerated since November 2021 and has not seen her Paris-based husband and twin children for several years.

She said the trial that opens Sunday will be the fourth such case against her.

Mohammadi is already serving sentences based on several convictions issued in recent years, which her family says punish her for rights campaigning.

According to her family, her sentences now amount to 12 years and three months of imprisonment, 154 lashes, two years of exile and various social and political restrictions.

Mohammadi has long been a staunch opponent of the obligation for women in Iran to wear the headscarf and has continued her campaign even in prison, refusing to wear the hijab in front of male officials.