The first Iranian official to die in a plane crash was on 29 September 1981 just two years after the Islamic revolution, writes Akhtar Makoii.

An Iranian Army A330 aircraft, carrying army and IRGC commanders, crashed in the southern Kahrizak region killing all on board.

That crash, which killed the head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and one of the leading figures of the IRGC, remains controversial to this day despite the fact that an investigation at the time put it down to a mistake by a flight engineer.

Doubters of the official version have linked the crash to a series of assassination attempts in the wake of the revolution that included an explosion at the prime minister’s office killed the prime minister and injured Khamenei.

In 1985, an F-27 crashed that was carrying Fazlullah Mahalati, ayatollah Rohollah Khomeini’s representative in the IRGC. All 51 people on board died.

In one of the deadliest aviation accidents in Iranian history, a Russian Yak-40 plane crashed in 2001, leaving Minister of Roads, Rahman Dadman, two deputy ministers, and several parliamentarians dead. 

That incident was also put down to an error on the part of the pilot.