The circumstances could hardly have been more difficult, as the decades-old helicopter, which had clocked up thousands of hours of air time, embarked on a journey over treacherous terrain in thick fog.
It is unclear why the American-made Bell 212 helicopter that was carrying Iran’s president and foreign minister crashed into a mountainside near the Azerbaijan border on Sunday.
But analysts and former officials said the fault was most likely to be technical problems, given that much of Iran’s air fleet is in dire need of spare parts that Tehran has been unable to buy due to US and other western sanctions.
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