The General Staff of Iran’s Armed Forces has officially denied Turkey’s claim that its Akinci drone located the crash site of the helicopter carrying late President Raisi, stating that a domestic UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle) had found the crash site.
Iranian President Reisi had attended a dam opening ceremony on the Iran-Azerbaijan border on 19 May. On the way back to Iran the helicopter crashed, resulting in the death of Raisi and seven others including Foreign Minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, the Imam of Tabriz, Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Al-e-Hashem, and the Governor of East Azerbaijan Province, Malek Rahmati.
Turkish Defence Minister Yaşar Güler had claimed that an unarmed Akinci UAV had entered Iranian airspace and found the location of the helicopter wreckage and shared the location with Iranian authorities. Turkish President Erdoğan had called the drone’s success a demonstration of Turkey’s unmanned aerial capabilities.
In response to these claims, Iran’s official news agency IRNA stated that there was a margin of error of seven kilometres in the coordinates shared by the drones sent by Turkey.
In the statement made by Iran’s General Staff, it was explained that the drone sent by Turkey “could not transmit the exact coordinates of the helicopter wreckage scene due to the absence of necessary terrain identification equipment because of clouds” and instead returned to Turkey.