Most surprisingly, Turkey has ordered Iranian planes to land for inspections twice this past week.
An Iranian cargo plane was forced to land last Tuesday night in southeast Turkey at the Diyarbakir airport. Turkish media suggested Turkish officials acted at the request of the United Nations, which suspected the plane was carrying weaponry or nuclear material.
Turkish authorities made no comments about the landing, other than to say it was a “routine” search. “We ask some of those foreign planes requesting permission to fly over Turkey to land in our country to be searched. This standard procedure has been done previously for other foreign planes to check their documents or shipments,” said an unidentified officer. He didn’t name any other countries whose planes had been ordered to land for inspections.
Turkish Foreign Ministry spokesman Selcuk Unal said, “This Iranian cargo plane received permission [to fly over Turkey] but even in this situation we can ask some planes to make an unscheduled landing for technical reasons.” While the government downplayed the inspection, news agencies said Ankara had two Turkish fighter jets ready to force a landing if the plane, en route to Aleppo in northern Syria, did not cooperate. It wasn’t clear if that fighter jet story was true or merely the product of an imaginative reporter.
After an overnight search, the plane was found to contain 150 tons of food and no “materials contrary to international standards,” reported Agence France Presse.
Only five days later, Turkey ordered another Iranian aircraft to land for another search. As of Tuesday, that plane had been kept on the ground three days, Agence France Presse reported. Its reporter said he could see that the plane’s cargo had been completely offloaded.
The respected Ankara daily Milliyet reported Tuesday that the inspection had found the plane loaded with rocket launchers, mortars, rifles and other military goods that Iran is barred from exporting under UN sanctions. Milliyet gave no source for its information, and said that Turkish officials had declined to comment.
In Ankara, the spokesman at the Iranian embassy denied that the plane had been required to land, and said the aircraft landed in line with a “previous coordination” with the Turkish government.
There was some suspicion the first plane was ordered to land knowing there were no arms on board, but to lull Iran into believing it could safely send a plane a few days later without fear of an inspection.
The plane searches in Turkey followed the seizure of a cargo ship by the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), who said the vessel contained weapons from Iran that were destined for Hamas in the Gaza Strip. The ship, Victoria, sailed under the Liberian flag, was German-owned and was operated by a French shipping company.
Thirty-nine containers were confiscated, including four found to contain 50 tons of Iranian weaponry set to be unloaded in Egypt and moved clandestinely to Gaza without Egypt’s knowledge. Among the weaponry were 2,500 mortar shells, between 67,000-75,000 bullets and six anti-ship missiles. Also on board were instruction booklets written in Persian. The containers were disguised as food and Israel said those connected to the Victoria knew nothing about the arms.
“To all those who questioned and attacked and criticized Israel for stopping Gaza-bound ships in order to check them, here is the answer,” said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “Their origin is in Iran, they passed through Syria and were en route to terror elements in Gaza. But their ultimate target was Israeli civilians. It is our duty, not just our right, to stop these ships and remove their weaponry,” he said.
Netanyahu spoke at the southern Israeli port of Ashdod were the ship was being held and the seized weapons were lined up on the dock for reporters to inspect.
Deputy Navy Commander Rear Admiral Rani Ben-Yehuda said that it “needs to be considered” that the two Iranian warships that crossed the Suez Canal last month to Syria brought the weaponry. But Ben-Yehuda did not say outright that the Iranian Navy vessels had carried the arms to Syria and Israeli press reports last month said Israel had been told by Egypt that those ships were not carrying arms. However, the Iranian ships docked in Lattakia last month and the Victoria picked up its cargo in Lattakia this month.
UN sanctions resolutions bar Iran from exporting any arms and from importing most arms.
An increasing number of reports of violations have been brought to the attention of the UN sanctions committee over the last year with Iranian weapons being sent to Syria in September, to Nigeria in October, and Af-ghanistan’s Taliban in February. Iran is not only supplying weapons abroad, but also trying to obtain armaments as well, say foreign officials.
Iran-bound armaments have been confiscated in Malaysia, South Korea and Singapore over the last six months—but only announced last week.
Malaysian police confirmed the seizure last Thursday of two containers from a Malaysian-registered ship headed to Iran. National Police Chief Ismail Omar said the investigation into the shipment is still ongoing.
“I can confirm that we have seized the containers at Port Klang, but we do not know yet whether these are possibly parts to help make weapons of mass destruction or nuclear items,” he said. “We are waiting for a report from our nuclear agency on the parts seized before we can make determinations.”
South Korea and Singapore notified the UN sanctions committee of seizures but said little publicly. “South Korea authorities found more than 400 suspicious tubes [that could be utilized for nuclear facilities] in a jet cargo at Seoul airport in December,” a diplomat citing a report to the UN sanctions committee told Agence France Presse.
“In September, aluminum powder that can be used for rockets was found on a ship in Singapore harbor,” the diplomat added.
Why these reports have taken so long to surface is unclear, but they are certainly in the attention of the UN. “This is going to add to calls for at least tighter implementation of the current sanctions,” said a second UN official. “There are still too many countries not applying the [sanctions] measures.”
Iran has generally ignored the latest spate of seizure reports. For example, on Sunday, the Fars news agency reported that the Turkish government had rejected a UN call to allow it to inspect Iranian-bound cargos at Turkey’s eastern border. But Fars ignored the fact that Turkey had ordered two Iranian planes to land for inspections.
Iran also simply denied that any Iranian arms had been seized by Israel. Iranian Army Commander Ataollah Salehi said, “The Zionist regime is a regime blended with lies, producing lies and disseminating lies. We reject all such false news.” Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi also rejected the arms seizure report. “Iran’s presence in Mediterranean waters in very sensitive conditions was very valuable … and the Zionist regime wants to portray itself as a victim.”
Iran warned nation-states last year not to search Iranian cargo. “We warn the US and certain adventurist countries that if they are tempted to inspect Iranian air and ship cargos, we will take tough action against their ships in the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman,” said Majlis Speaker Ali Larijani last June. But the tough action the Islamic Republic has so far taken has been to censor the news of the seizures so the Iranian public doesn’t know about them.