The US Treasury Department has punished a Syrian airline owner and his two airlines for evading sanctions and helping Iran’s Mahan Air to buy nine Airbuses.
Iranian officials, in keeping with past practice, complained that the United States was violating the January 2014 interim nuclear agreement, which forbids adding new sanctions.
The United States has said it is not adding new sanctions, merely enforcing longstanding ones. Iran has effectively acknowledged the truth of that by never seriously pursuing its constant verbal complaints.
Treasury designated Al-Naser Airlines of Iraq, Sky Blue Bird Aviation of the UAE and the Syrian owner of the two airlines, Issam Shammout, as sanctions violators. That means US citizens may not do any business with them and any assets belonging to them in the United States are frozen in place. Few assets have been frozen as a result of passed designations because firms willing to defy US sanctions are usually willing to do so because they have no US assets to put at risk.
Mahan Air had already been sanctioned in October 2011 for flying weapons to Syria for the Pasdaran.
The nine Airbuses were acquired early this month in a sale from Al-Naser.
Transport Minister Abbas Akhundi said the planes were 12 to 13 years old. However, the US Treasury published the identifying numbers of the aircraft and they are actually 11 to 20 years old, considerably different from Akhundi’s claim.
The Treasury Department didn‘t say where Al-Naser got the planes, but a search of aircraft records on the Internet showed it had recently bought four of them from HiFly Malta, another four from Virgin Atlantic and the final plane from AerCap, a Dutch aircraft leasing firm.
Treasury said that Al-Naser ”since at least late 2013 has worked as a cutout to procure the Airbus aircraft from unwitting European vendors.”
The Treasury also designated the nine aircraft, meaning they are subject to seizure if they are ever flown to countries that cooperate with the United States.
The purchase of the nine planes increases Iran’s total seating capacity by a substantial 18 percent, from 22,000 to 26,000, Iran’s Civil Aviation Authority said. But the Treasury designation of the planes means they will only be usable on limited flight routes.