US targets Iran’s airline industry as part of pressure campaign

By Jennifer Hansler, CNN

(CNN) — The Trump administration took sweeping actions against Iran’s airline industry on Tuesday as part of its pressure campaign on Tehran.

The latest sanctions hit 27 Iranian airlines and nine service providers and sales agents accused of providing services to Mahan Air, which has been sanctioned since 2011. Mahan Air is a private Iranian airline accused of providing key support to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.

The service providers and sales agents sanctioned Tuesday are in Turkey, Malaysia, Kazakhstan and the United Arab Emirates.

“These jurisdictions have been on notice for some time, and now we’re moving quite directly to essentially cut off those operators from the Western financial system,” a Treasury official said Tuesday. It is not the first time the administration has targeted operators in other countries for allegedly supporting Mahan Air.

In addition, the US Treasury Department is “effectively today terminating all licenses that related to aviation,” the official said, including “payments for overflights of Iranian airspace, authorizations that have allowed non-US airlines that were flying US export-controlled airplanes into Iran.”

“We’ve also pulled back on a general license for safety and other emergency aviation support,” they said, noting they could consider such licenses on a case-by-case basis.

“Essentially, we’re taking the entire aviation sector of the Iranian economy out of the market,” they said.

The latest measures come as the administration seeks to cut off Tehran’s financial lifelines and stop its ability to fund the ongoing war. Administration officials like Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent have raised the prospect of regime change in connection to the sanctions.

Richard Nephew, a former US deputy special envoy for Iran, said the new airline sanctions “could be meaningful but mostly as a way of making it hard to engage in clandestine procurement and similar given the blockade” the US has maintained in the Strait of Hormuz.

“Tourism has dried up, not surprisingly, so this mainly hinders business and cargo transfers,” he told CNN. “If we take the next stop and threaten airports providing services, (it) could reduce overall transit.”

Still, experts and diplomats have questioned the overall impact the new sanctions campaign, dubbed “Operation Economic Outcast,” will have on Tehran, which has withstood decades of economic pressure.

The Treasury official on Tuesday claimed there are a “number of different economic indicators” and “a number of different anecdotes that we’re seeing that sort of suggest and sort of show the effect that this is having.”

There has also been deep skepticism from experts and diplomats that the US will take meaningful action against key Iranian partners like China.

“We have more in common with the Chinese on Iran than we disagree with them on,” Bessent said at an event on the sidelines of the G20 Finance Ministers meeting last week, referencing nuclear weapons and freedom of navigation.

Asked about conversations and possible points of agreement with Beijing, another Treasury official said Tuesday that Bessent has “had a number of conversations with lots of foreign counterparts about these issues, and some of those conversations are best kept private.”

“Just know that there is a level of progress being made, even if you may not see it publicly,” the official said without specifically referring to China.

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