And then, Breaking News.

Hello, and welcome to our viewers here in the United States and all around the world. I'm Paula Newton, and we are following Breaking News Out of Iran, where state media has now confirmed the death of President Ibrahim Raïsi and the country's foreign minister after a deadly helicopter crash. Now, rescue crews are now at a staging area. Those are live pictures where they are trying to assess where exactly the wreckage is and to begin in their recovery efforts. Iranian officials say the helicopter ran into trouble amid heavy fog on Sunday afternoon. Images of the crash site in Iran's East Azerbaijan province show the remote mountainous area where the aircraft went down. You are looking at a photo of it right there. The President and other officials had been attending a ceremony for the opening of a new dam near the border with Azerbaijan. Rescuers faced difficult weather conditions overnight, including cold and heavy fog. As they scramble to locate the crash site. Iranians were urge to pray for the President amid news of the crash, with the country's Supreme Leader vowing that there will be no disruption in Iran's work. Seen as Paula Hancox is following all these developments and joins us now live from Abu Dhabi.

We should say state media has officially declared that their president has died, and we have not heard again from the Supreme Leader. But just if you can bring us right up to date on what happened and any reaction that you have coming in.

Well, Paula, we now do know that nine people on board that helicopter lost their lives in the Eastern Azerbaijan province. We know that the President was on board, the Foreign Minister. We understand a governor of that province, also an Imam of Friday prayers of that province, along with security, the pilots, the crew. So nine people in all went down with that helicopter. Now, you have mentioned the dire weather conditions. It took rescue teams around 16 hours to be able to locate and get to that area itself. The rescue teams were unable to put a helicopter into the air, they said, because of the weather conditions. The fact that the fog was so thick, visibility was very limited. We also heard from the rescue teams that there were sub-zero temperatures, that it was extremely cold in these areas. You can see from the images, a very mountainous area, inhospitable terrain, and sparsely populated. So that's the latest information we have. We do know also from state media that the government has convened an urgent meeting. They say that, according to a photo that was provided by state media, that the chair that President Raisi would usually sit in had a black sach across it for morning.

We understand from state media as well, that there will be details in the hours to come about the morning procession, the process, the timing, the details. All those will come to us shortly through state media. But people in Iran will be waking up this Monday morning to this shocking news that both the President and also the top diplomat have lost their lives in this helicopter crash. Of course, questions will asked internally now about what happened, about why this helicopter was in the air with such dire weather conditions. We know it was in a convoy. There were three helicopters in all carrying the delegation of President Raisi from this inauguration of the dam project just on the border with Azerbaijan. There were three helicopters, two of them landed safely, but the one carrying the President and the Foreign Minister, we know now, did not. Paula.

Paula Hancock for us in Abu Dhabi, continuing to track reaction. Really appreciate it. I want to bring in CNN's chief international anchor now, Krishnan Amampur. Krishnan, really good to have your insights here. You interviewed the foreign minister a little bit over a year ago. You tried to interview the President. I just want to get your reaction to what really has been shocking news.

Well, Paula, it is obviously shocking news, and it couldn't come at a more unstable time for Iran and for the region. Iran faces, as you know, those internal protests and discontent that have been crushed brutally in the aftermath of Mahsa Amini's death, and that was under the direction of President Raisi and the Supreme Leader and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. It also comes at a time when this Israel war on Gaza against Hamas continues. And as you know, the perennial shadow war between Israel and Iran that had been going on broke into the open over the last several weeks. That somewhat subsided after a reaction from both sides. But nonetheless, it shows the peril of the situation. You can imagine for the United States, for the West, one of the most important issues is the Iran nuclear issue. That had been somewhat contained after the 2015 nuclear agreement that President Obama negotiated with Iran and with Europe, and was rubber-stamped, or rather, stamped into officialdom by the entire United Nations process. President Trump, at the urging also of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, pulled the United States out of that, and that caused much more uncertainty and stability over the process of the Iran nuclear program.

We understand over the last week or so, there was some word from the IAEA, the UN Nuclear Agency, that they were back in talks with Iran to make sure that That everything was happening above board and within the nuclear regulations, the Nonproliferation Treaty. We wait to see what work they were doing on that. It's known that the United States is trying to stabilize issues with Iran. Given the volatility of the region right now. As for inside Iran, as you mentioned, the Supreme Leader, Ali Khamenei, issued many statements before the news that he had actually been found dead, saying that the nation was praying and you're bound to see days, if not weeks of official mourning organized all over the country. He also said that the affairs of the country will not be disrupted or disturbed. To that point, there is a act of succession. There is a line of succession. There's a first vice president, and you're bound to see at least interim measures being put in place to ensure the continuous running of the system. At one point, before the Mahsa Amini death and before the protests and the riots back in 2022, Raisi, a very hard-line fundamentalist, was being considered a successor to the Supreme Leader Ali Khamani, who himself is elderly.

News of his ill health and frailty have appeared to be vastly overstated the years. However, he is aging, and there needs to be a succession there in place if that system is to continue. Raisi was then considered to have somewhat disqualified himself or besmirched and sullied his reputation nation, given the political and popular uprisings against him inside Iran, as well as the economy being really bad for the people, he is not considered to have brought prosperity at all to the Iranian nation. If you look online on social media, you can see the reaction from many, many people, both outside and inside Iran. His most recent legacy will have been the brutal crackdown on the freedom life protesters, the women life freedom protesters. From his very early days, he was very senior, if not head of the judiciary process, and he had been accused, or not accused, he had been overseeing some of the trials in the very early days of the revolution, and in one point signing off on one that led to the execution of thousands of anti-regime officials or activists. So his career has been incredibly checkered, but nonetheless, it's a big change and a shock in a very volatile region, in a very volatile place.

And as for Hossein Amir Abdullahian, yes, I interviewed him. He is somebody who's had a huge amount of interaction with the UN, with international governments, and he's known very well around the world. Paula?

Christian, do you think that that will be a bit of a loss? I was discussing earlier just that he was a man who certainly was nuanced in his foreign policy, perhaps did the work that President Raisi didn't want to do or wasn't capable of doing. Do you think that at this pivotal time in the region and beyond, that that is quite a loss for Iran as well?

You know, Paula, the truth of the matter is that Iran is run by the Supreme Leader and more and more by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. Those are the people who run the country. The rest are acting at their service and their behest. They are not independent. You can have nuance, you can have style differences that can either be more abrasive or less, but the actual running of the country is from a much higher level. So I think certainly an international affairs, in international security affairs. So I believe that that is likely not to change.