Iran Air returns to Spain 17 years later.

In a 2020 with the commercial aviation industry in the worst stage of its history, the Government of Tehran has generated a curious news: Iran Air will resume its operations with Spain after an absence of 17 years. It was in 2003 when the last of its planes took off from Madrid-Barajas airport and this 2020 will return, initially with a weekly flight, as of Wednesday September 2nd, as this newspaper has learned from direct sources and as has been corroborated by both the Iranian embassy and the IRNA agency.

The one returning to Spain is the public or flag company of the Islamic Republic, since until last April direct links from Iran to Spain were maintained through the airport of Barcelona and thanks to the private company Mahan Air, the second most important in the country. The pressures of the United States towards the EU countries to which it flew made France, Italy and Germany progressively veto their flights. The last to move was Spain in April: Barcelona was left without a flight to Teheran, thus definitively closing the entry into Europe of a company linked to former leaders of the Guardians of the Revolution-Force Quds.

Washintgon has been harassing Mahan Air for almost a decade by including it on the list of Iranian companies to which to apply sanctions, arguing that its planes were transporting equipment, ammunition and combatants to conflict zones, especially Syria and Yemen, and of collaborating with Hezbollah.

In the case of Iran Air, successive US economic sanctions since the end of the 1970s left the airline with a very aging fleet. Only the nuclear agreement of 2015 alleviated the situation. That agreement, one of the great triumphs of Barack Obama, was liquidated three years later by his successor. In the aeronautical field, the change of course made that both Boeing and Airbus and other constructors were left overnight without a significant order book of the Iranian airlines.

Only the French-Italian ATR was able to deliver almost all the aircraft ordered: 13 of 16 state-of-the-art ATR 72 turboprops to reinforce the country’s regional network. As for the order placed with Boeing, no new aircraft could be added and only three new or nearly new Airbus (one A321 and two long-range A330s) were delivered. The latter will be responsible for operating the line to Madrid.

The rest of the new aircraft, up to 180 medium and long-range units from both Airbus and Boeing, which were to represent an ambitious expansion of the airline’s international network, have been left in limbo and Iran has once again been punished for its international presence.

In fact, Assaf Moran, number two at the Israeli Embassy in Spain, regretted a few days ago on Twitter the news of the recovery of the Madrid-Tehran flight, accusing the airline of “arms smuggling and destabilizing the Middle East”.

By Javier Ortega Figueiral – La Vanguardia

Photo: John Taggart / Wikimedia