Iraq Suspends Iranian Flights at All Four Airports Following US Secondary Sanctions on Iranian Airlines
Why It MattersCoordinated regional airspace and ground-handling restrictions show how quickly secondary sanctions can fragment a national carrier's route network across multiple neighboring states at once.
What happened
Iraq has suspended Iranian flights at all four airports where Iranian carriers operated, after Erbil and Sulaimaniyah halted such flights starting Friday, September 25, 2026, according to two sources. These suspensions followed earlier halts at Baghdad and Najaf. Iraq had ordered its civil aviation authority to stop Iranian flights to Baghdad airport from Wednesday, and discussions about diverting those flights to Najaf were overtaken when Najaf itself suspended Iranian flights.
Najaf International Airport announced it was suspending all incoming and outgoing flights to and from Iran effective 02:00 GMT on September 25, 2026, until further notice, citing directives from competent authorities. The airport urged relevant parties to notify airlines and operators and said any resumption would be announced officially.
The suspensions follow a US Treasury announcement that any global companies doing business with Iranian airlines after September 23 would face sanctions, with the stated aim of grounding Iran's entire civilian fleet worldwide. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Iranian airlines' operations worldwide would halt as of September 23 as part of broader sanctions on Iran. US President Donald Trump described the strategy as "economic D-Day" last month. Iran's Civil Aviation Organization announced on Tuesday that flights from Tehran to Baghdad and to Muscat, Oman, would be canceled beginning early Wednesday.
Beyond Iraq, the United Arab Emirates suspended flights by Iranian carriers until further notice on Thursday, and Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Oman have also halted flights to and from Iran. A Tehran–Dushanbe flight was forced to return to Tehran's Imam Khomeini International Airport after Turkmenistan denied Iranian airlines use of its airspace. Mohammad Mokhber, an adviser to Iran's leader Mojtaba Khamenei, warned on X that "flights in the region are either free for everyone or for no one," adding that if Iran cannot operate flights and receive ground services at airports, "no country in the region will obtain these capabilities."
Industry impact & what to watch
This is a case of secondary sanctions reaching past the sanctioned party to pressure the companies and states that keep it connected to the wider aviation network — a single Treasury measure aimed at grounding Iran's fleet worldwide has already produced airport-level suspensions in at least six jurisdictions within days. Regional connectivity depends on a chain of mutual permissions: airspace transit, ground handling, and landing rights at each stop, and any single link being withdrawn forces rerouting, diversion, or outright cancellation, as seen when Turkmenistan's airspace denial sent a Tehran–Dushanbe flight back to Imam Khomeini International Airport.
Mokhber's warning that regional flight access is "either free for everyone or for no one" signals the retaliatory logic such measures can trigger, where reciprocal restrictions on ground services and overflight rights could extend well beyond the carriers originally targeted. Whether that escalates will depend on how many states follow Iraq, the UAE, Azerbaijan, Georgia, and Oman in formalizing suspensions, and on whether the affected airports issue the official resumption announcements they have promised once the underlying sanctions directive changes.
