Image of Iran's late president Raisi with a pager raises questions after plane crash
Shafaq News/ A recently surfaced image of Iran's late President Ebrahim Raisi, meeting outgoing Iraqi Parliament Speaker Mohammad al-Halboosi, has sparked speculation following Raisi's fatal plane crash in May.
In one of the images, Raisi is seen with al-Halboosi, but in another, a pager appears on a table near the president, raising questions. The pager's presence has drawn attention due to a recent intelligence operation targeting members of Hezbollah, for which Israeli agency Mossad is blamed.
The key question emerging is whether Raisi had the pager with him on the ill-fated flight on May 19, when his plane went down under mysterious circumstances.
The discovery has fueled calls to reopen the investigation into the crash, suggesting potential new angles that were previously unexplored.
At least nine people were killed and 2,750 were wounded when pagers exploded simultaneously in Lebanon, the health minister said on September 17 after the Iranian-backed Hezbollah said two of its members and a girl were among those killed in the "mysterious" explosions.
Mojtaba Amani, Iran's ambassador in Beirut, was injured, Iranian media reported. The Fars news agency, which is close to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, quoted an unidentified informed source as saying that Amani suffered a "superficial injury" as a result of a pager explosion.
The pagers that exploded were the latest models of the devices that Hezbollah imported into the country in recent month, Reuters reported, citing three unidentified sources.
Reports from Lebanon indicate that "hundreds" of members of the Lebanese Hezbollah group, including fighters and aid workers, were injured in the explosion of the pagers in southern Lebanon and its suburbs.
The Lebanese Foreign Ministry called it an "Israeli cyberattack," adding that some of the pagers that exploded were in Syria. The ministry also said in a statement that it was preparing to submit a complaint to the UN Security Council.
