Iranian Flights to Baghdad, Muscat and Azerbaijan Grounded as US Aviation Sanctions Take Hold

Since US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warned on Monday, September 21, that Iranian airlines would be "shut down around the world" starting Wednesday, the region's airports have been racing to comply, or refusing to. The sanctions took effect September 23, and consequences followed quickly.

Iran's Civil Aviation Organization announced it was canceling flights from Tehran to Baghdad and Muscat starting at midnight local time Wednesday, according to the semi-official Tasnim news agency. Spokesman Majid Akhavan said Iranian authorities are working to reroute Baghdad-bound flights to Najaf airport instead, and that talks with Omani officials over the Muscat suspension are ongoing.

But Iraq wasn't just waiting on Tehran to cancel. Two sources at Iraq's Civil Aviation Authority told Reuters, in reporting cited by the Times of India, that Baghdad had separately ordered its own suspension of Iranian flights effective the same midnight deadline, with officials there also discussing the Najaf diversion. Iran International reported the same two-track story: Iran pulling its planes and Iraq blocking them, independently and simultaneously.

Azerbaijan's State Civil Aviation Agency said it suspended all Iranian airline flights starting September 22, according to Arab Times Online, and state carrier Azerbaijan Airlines (AZAL) tied the move directly to the new US sanctions package. Iran Air disputed that account, telling Iranian outlets it had received no official notification from Baku and that its flights to Azerbaijan were continuing as scheduled.

Georgia had already suspended flights to Iran starting September 21, according to BigGo Finance. And Turkish Airlines, separate from these sanctions, told Iran International it had suspended all its own Iran routes until at least March 2027, with no guarantee they'll resume then.

What Bessent's threat actually does

The mechanism is not a flight ban in the traditional sense. The US doesn't have legal authority to close another country's airspace. Instead, Washington is threatening secondary sanctions against any foreign airport, fuel supplier, ground-handling firm or ticketing agent that keeps servicing Iranian carriers.

"When Iranian airlines land at an airport, you cannot provide them with fuel, you cannot provide them with landing services, you cannot sell them tickets, or you will be knocked out of the dollar system," Bessent told CNBC. Aviation analysts quoted by Al Jazeera said that threat achieves nearly the same result as an airspace closure, because no airport wants to lose dollar-system access over a handful of Iranian flights.

The Treasury Department laid the groundwork on September 8, sanctioning 36 entities tied to Iran's aviation sector and designating 27 Iranian airlines, including agents of Mahan Air, Iran's largest private carrier and a repeat sanctions target dating back to 2011. US officials have alleged Iran uses civilian flights to move weapons and personnel, an allegation Tehran has not conceded.

China and Russia aren't playing along

Mahan Air is still flying to Moscow and Guangzhou, according to BigGo Finance, because China and Russia have declined to enforce the US measures. Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Guo Jiakun told reporters Tuesday that Beijing "consistently opposes illegal unilateral sanctions that lack a basis in international law or authorisation from the UN Security Council."

That's a fair point on its own terms: the sanctions are unilateral US Treasury action, not a UN Security Council resolution, and China's objection to bypassing that body is a standard, long-held position, not a novel dodge invented for this moment. Whether that makes the sanctions illegitimate or simply unilateral leverage is a matter of perspective the sources don't resolve. Guo's comments landed just as Chinese President Xi Jinping arrived in Washington for a state visit and trade-truce talks, though none of the sources tie the two events together directly.

Who actually gets squeezed

Iraq's role matters beyond diplomacy. Millions of Iranian pilgrims travel to Najaf and Karbala each year, with traffic spiking around the annual Arbaeen pilgrimage, according to Iran International. Rerouting Baghdad-bound flights to Najaf may keep some of that travel alive, but it's an improvised fix, not a resolution.

Tehran said Saturday it remains open to Qatar-mediated talks on a longer-term settlement, according to Al Jazeera and Yahoo News, while keeping a combative public posture toward Washington. No timeline for those talks has been set. The immediate open question is whether Oman finalizes its own suspension, whether Azerbaijan and Iran Air resolve their conflicting accounts of the Baku route, and whether Iraq's parallel suspension order holds once the religious-travel pressure mounts.