Mahan Air flight to Paris suspended "due to sanctions"
An official from Mahan Air says that the company's flights to Paris will be suspended due to the sanctions. Two months ago, the German government also revoked Mahan Air's flight permit to the country.
Mahan Air has announced that its flights to Paris will soon be suspended. Mahan Air previously operated three round-trip flights between Tehran and Paris per week.
On Tuesday evening, March 19, a Mahan Air official reported that the company's round-trip flights to Paris would be suspended from the beginning of April. He cited French sanctions against the Islamic Republic as the reason for the decision, but did not provide further details about the sanctions.
Mahan Air was the second airline of the Islamic Republic to be placed on the US sanctions list in 2011, accused of collaborating with the Revolutionary Guard Corps.
In recent years, the United States has repeatedly accused Mahan Air of transporting personnel and military equipment to Lebanese Hezbollah militias and other Iranian-backed groups in Syria.
According to reports, the administration of US President Donald Trump has pressured its European allies to side with Washington, including by sanctioning Mahan Air, after announcing the United States' withdrawal from the nuclear deal and the return of sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
US pressure and cancellation of flight permits to Germany
Apparently, these pressures were not without influence in the German government's decision to revoke Mahan Air's flight permit to the country. On February 1, German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas cited Mahan Air's transportation of weapons and soldiers to war zones in Syria as the reason for this action, calling the decision necessary.
Bijan Jirsaei, the Iranian-born foreign affairs spokesman for the German Free Democrats (FDP) faction, said in an interview with Deutsche Welle at the time that Germany's decision to revoke Mahan Air's flight permit was made after pressure from the US government.
After the announcement of the revocation of Mahan Air's license to fly to the cities of Düsseldorf and Munich, a number of US politicians, including the Treasury Secretary and the US ambassador to Berlin, praised the move and described it as a step towards combating terrorism. However, German government spokesman Steffen Seibert denied that Washington's pressure played a role in the decision.
Mahan Air flights to European countries were also banned for about a year in September 2007 due to what was said to be non-compliance with EU safety standards. France has not yet officially explained the reason for the ban on Mahan Air and the revocation of the company's flight permits to Paris.
Source: DW
