Exclusive: After Israeli Attacks Two Iranian Airlines Stop Flights To Syria
Two Iranian airlines stopped flights to Syria after an Israeli air strike June 10 temporarily shut down the Damascus airport, sources told Iran International.
Two Iranian airlines stopped flights to Syria after an Israeli air strike June 10 temporarily shut down the Damascus airport, sources told Iran International.
Western intelligence sources said that Caspian Air and Qeshm Fars Air both have stopped flying to Syria and the only Iranian airline sending planes is Mahan Air, which was sanctioned by the United States in 2011 for transporting weapons to Iranian proxies at the outset of the Syrian civil war.
Caspian Air is also sanctioned by the United States for its links with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard and its extraterritorial Qods (Quds) Force (IRGC-QF). In 2019, the US also sanctioned Qeshm cargo airline as part of Mahan Air and providing material support to the IRGC-QF. All three airlines are believed to have been established and owned by the Revolutionary Guard.
According to information received by Iran International, Mahan Air flights have increased by 30 percent following suspension of service by the other two companies. Aleppo is the destination of most Mahan flights. The same sources said Hamid Arabnejad the CEO of Mahan Air in a recent trip to Syria took part in the inauguration of a new flight to the Aleppo airport.
In addition to transporting weapons, the sources alleged that Mahan Air is also carrying smuggled goods to Syria without paying taxes or customs duties.
Last November, a hacking group calling itself ‘Vigilant sons of the homeland’ in Persian accused Mahan Air of closely linked with IRGC-QF and often issuing fake or falsified air tickets for people with false identities.
The group also alleged that Mahan was registering its interactions with IRGC-QF in one particular name, which appeared seven thousand times in the company’s records. “We’ve found Mahan does keep records of its suspicious business with QF under the name ‘Hamrah’, and that this business is managed by sardar (general) Golparast.”
The group added that Golparast is also listed as the owner of Qeshm Fars Air which “is a known QF cover company, frequently used to transport munitions throughout the Middle East,” the group said in November.
Israel is known to have conducted operations, including in Iran, to track and prevent IRGC-QF form transporting weapons to other countries.
Iran International reported July 21 that the Israeli Mossad had captured and interrogated an IRGC official inside Iran, about weapons transfers. The man was introducing himself as Yadollah Khedmati, deputy commander of the IRGC logistics and provided information to Mossad about weapons transfers before being freed.
IRGC’s wings for weapons transport
Mahan Air was fully under the control of IRGC-QF when Qasem Soleimani headed the extraterritorial military-intelligence unit. There were many reports about the airline’s role in weapons shipments. Soleimani was killed in a targeted US air strike in Baghdad in January 2020.
Amir Assadollahi a Mahan Air pilot revealed in June 2020 that on one occasion Soleimani in 2013 Soleimani was on a Mahan flight to Syria with 200 passengers and 7 tons of “banned cargo” that landed in Baghdad with orders of the Iraqi government. Soleimani instructed the pilot to bribe inspectors and was able to continue the flight to Syria.
Iran’s former foreign minister Javad Zarif in an audio recording leaked in 2021 had said that Soleimani preferred to use the official Iran Air flights for his purposes to reduce risk to his operations.
However, it seems that with continuing Israeli air strikes on Iranian arms depots in Syria, IRGC-QF prefers to use Mahan Air more often.
Israeli is usually silent about its attacks on Iranian targets in Syria but in recent months there have been repeated attacks on Iranian arms depots. The attack on the Damascus airport on June 10 was the 15th airstrike in Syria attributed to Israel.
In an article with a long historical background on violent terror acts by the Mojahedin Khalq organization, known as Mek in the 1980s, the IRGC mouthpiece insisted that Iran has the Islamic Republic has the right to self-defense and it would be justified if “it employs hard power against terrorists. The capabilities of Iran’s attack drones and ballistic missiles can be used to hit the center of the [Mek] in Albania without any legal impediment.
The article added that authorities in Tehran should issue the necessary warning to the Albanian government, which is hosting a few thousands MeK members, and follow it up with military action.
But Fars also mentioned “host governments”, where the MeK might have a presence, which could include France and others in Europe.
“If host governments refuse to expel and extradite the hypocrites (a term used by Tehran for the MeK), they should be threatened with reciprocal action…based on the doctrine of the Islamic Republic to fight security threats at their source,” the article said. It went on to cite the principle of “Responsibility to Protect” the nation and the UN Charter’s article 51, “which allows military action to preserve international peace and security.”
The Mojahedin were a revolutionary group engaged in opposition to the monarchy in the 1970s and carried out armed attacks. They fully backed Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s decision to set up the Islamic Republic in early 1979 after Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi left the country and Khomeini returned from exile. However, tensions rose between the group and the clerical regime taking shape, which led to mutual violence.
The MeK leadership fled to Iraq, which had attacked Iran in September 1980, and received protection from the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein who helped them form a militia and fight against Iran. The Islamic Republic counts this as high treason, in addition to violent acts the group carried out inside Iran.
In 1988, the Islamic Republic carried out a decision blessed by Khomeini to kill around 3,000 members of the group serving their prison sentences. Many say this is equivalent to war crimes and a crime against humanity.
An Iranian diplomat who plotted to bomb a MeK rally in Paris was convicted and sentenced to 20 years in jail on terrorism charges by a Belgian court, and a former prison Guard was recently sentenced to life in Sweden for his role in the 1988 prison killings.
MeK members and sympathizers gradually migrated to Europe and North America where they formed a close-knit organization, sometimes likened to a sect, which increasingly changed its path as a terror group to a relatively rich lobbying organization in the West against the clerical regime. However, a few thousand members who had stayed behind in a camp in Iraq were transferred to European counties and Albania by the United States and the United Nations in 2016.
The same year the group opened an office in Albania and is generally referred to as an Albania-based organization. Until a few years before the move, MeK was listed as a terrorist organization by the United States and the European Union, but as it became a lobbying and political entity, the designations were lifted.