On May 19th, after a historical meeting with the Azeri president, Ebrahim Raisi, Hossein Abdollahian and several others boarded an Iranian Bell 212 helicopter and took off towards Tabriz. For unknown reasons, the helicopter crashed near the village of Uzi in the East Azerbaijan province. All passengers died on site.
Since then, as expected, the biggest focus has been on Raisi’s death. This makes sense of course; after all, he was the president and in that, the second most important figure in the Islamic Republic of Iran. Moreover, he was supposed to succeed Khamenei after his death and receive support from the IRGC.
Raisi, a conservative and radical leader fits the IRGC perfectly, supporting their methods and operational demands to increase terror in and outside of the country. He believed in the strategy of feeding the proxies and let them do the dirty job.
So, he needed someone trustworthy to follow those guidelines outside Iran. Which means, that in this context of supporting and cooperating with all of Iran’s terror proxies, he wasn’t the most important figure who died in this crash. He didn’t organize and supervise this endeavor, but Hossein Amir Abdollahian did.
Ever since the death of Soleimani, Abdollahian was maybe the most critical figure of all the terror platforms Iran has been constructing for decades. Although he was not a “warrior” or a “field agent”, he continued Soleimani’s vision to build a strong terror coalition with all its proxies and allies. Abdollahian took the wheel for creating the dream of Soleimani and Khamenei by deepening the cooperation between Iran and its proxies and between the proxies themselves. He was the right man at the right time for both the regime and Quds Force.
Abdollahian used a skill that is not so common in Iranian leadership, something that those who preceded him in office lacked, he spoke Arabic. Mind you, in Iran, the Arab language is classified as lame and related to low-level classes and people usually don’t learn it.
This fact, combined with his years of experience in the foreign office and his terror agenda guidelines were essential in achieving his goal. Abdollahian was also the main Iranian figure leading the nuclear talks with the West. His smooth talk almost prevailed.
By frequently visiting almost every country in the Middle East, including the leadership of all the Iranian proxies/allies, speaking with them in their mother tongue, he gained their respect and built deep personal relations that in time even improved. He used to listen to their logistical needs and shared them back in Tehran with the upper levels. Promoting Tehran’s terror agenda, he created something that did not exist in such a strong way before, a brotherhood of terror that is ready to act when ordered.
Furthermore, as a foreign minister, he met his global counterparts and was in a unique position of getting to know how to manipulate and sell the West what they wanted to hear and then tell his boss and its proxies how to react to that.
in the Russia – Ukraine war, he saw the great opportunity for Iran to strengthen its ties with Russia by supplying Putin with the UAVs he wanted. That decision affected the ME directly.
Abdollahian visited Haniyeh in Qatar at least three times after the Hamas massacre and there is no doubt that Haniyeh was present at the funerals first and foremost to honor Abdollahian, and only then Raisi.
In fact, he is personally responsible for the upgrade of Hamas in the terror circle with Hezbollah. Such an intimate level was not existed before, especially as they are Sunni. This is the work of Abdollahian. Some say that by doing what he did, he was more important than QF commander Qaani.
Iran’s loss of Abdollahian may become a global turning point. The big question will be how is successor will fill his shoes and how the West will react to it.
This opinion is not at all written in tears for his loss. It’s about the analysis of his significance, which is hardly spoken of.
The war on terror received an unexpected triumph.
