The crash occurred as Raisi was returning from a ceremony on the Iran-Azerbaijan border.
"We join with the relatives of the victims and the Iranian people in prayer and grief," Duda wrote on X. He reflected on Poland's own tragedy, the Smolensk plane crash of 2010, which claimed the lives of 96 people, including Polish President Lech Kaczyński and his wife, Maria Kaczyńska, acknowledging the profound impact such tragedies have on nations, emphasizing the shared experience of loss and mourning.
"Few nations have such tragic pages in their history. But we Poles, terribly affected in 2010 by the crash of the Polish government plane in Smolensk, Russia, know the feeling of shock and emptiness that remains in human hearts and in the state after the sudden loss of the political and social elite, after the sudden loss of loved ones and friends," he wrote.
The Iranian authorities confirmed the deadly crash on Monday morning. The helicopter carrying Raisi, Foreign Minister Amirabdollahian, and other officials crashed into a mountainside in poor weather conditions. The official cause of the crash is still unknown.
President Ebrahim Raisi, a close ally of Iran's supreme leader, won the presidency in 2021. He had previously lost the presidential race in 2017 to then-incumbent Hasan Rouhani. Raisi had been under U.S. sanctions since 2019 for overseeing executions and other human rights abuses, including his involvement in the 1988 executions and the violent suppression of protests in 2022.
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Source: IAR