US sanctions squeeze Iran's aviation, forcing travelers to riskier land routes

In September, the United States Treasury Department added Iran's aviation sector to its sanctions list, targeting not just Iranian airlines but the foreign airports, fuel suppliers, and ground-handling companies that service them. The mechanism is indirect but effective: secondary sanctions threaten any foreign entity that continues to work with Iranian carriers, making the financial and legal risk too high for most to bear. No American official needs to order a Turkish airport or an Omani fuel depot to refuse Iranian planes. The threat of losing access to the US financial system does that work.

The result is a rapid unraveling of Iran's already fragile air connections. By late September, flights to Baghdad and Muscat had been suspended. Azerbaijan and Georgia stopped accepting Iranian aircraft entirely. On September 24, Turkmenistan denied an Iranian plane permission to cross its airspace en route from Tehran to Dushanbe, forcing it to turn back. An Iranian travel agency, speaking anonymously for safety reasons, confirmed that routes to Oman, Iraq, Azerbaijan, and Georgia had been severely disrupted. Passengers discovered that a confirmed ticket no longer meant a flight would actually depart. One traveler told Deutsche Welle that agencies would still sell him a seat but could not promise the plane would leave.

The sanctions also suspended the J-1 general license, a mechanism that had allowed certain foreign aircraft to make temporary stops in Iran under specific conditions. Many commercial planes contain US-made parts or technology, which means any operation touching Iran now falls under American sanctions rules. For airlines, airports, and service providers already calculating risk, this suspension raised the stakes further.

With air routes closing, travelers are turning to land borders. One passenger whose flight was canceled described crossing overland from Iran into Turkey, then flying from Istanbul to his final destination. "The border was very crowded," he told DW. "A lot of people were trying to leave because they were worried the routes might close." But for families, elderly people, students, and patients, overland travel is far more punishing than a direct flight. A journey that once required a single ticket now demands multiple modes of transport, hotel stays, and sometimes additional visas. Costs accumulate quickly. For patients needing urgent medical treatment abroad, the extra days of travel can matter as much as the extra money.

Air freight has also been squeezed. Medicines, medical equipment, industrial parts, and laboratory samples that once moved by air now face the same restrictions. This pressure arrives at a moment when Iran is already struggling with severe maritime trade restrictions. Disruption around the Strait of Hormuz, higher insurance costs, and pressure on southern ports had already made imports and exports difficult. Now, with both air and sea routes contracting, Iran's economy is being forced toward dependence on land borders and indirect routes through neighboring states.

Iran's aviation sector was already fragile before these sanctions. The fleet is aging. Spare parts are hard to obtain. Some flights operate without radar guidance, leaving pilots with greater responsibility for navigation. In July, officials said roughly 150 aircraft were in the operational pool, with only about half of them actually flying at any given time. Alireza Salavati, a political economy analyst at the London-based Middle East Analytica, told DW that the loss of air links is unlikely to deliver a large, immediate blow to Iran's GDP. "Iran's aviation sector is small by regional standards," he said. "Unlike Turkey or the UAE, the country is not a major international hub."

But the damage to connectivity is real and immediate. For a heavily sanctioned economy, flights still matter for business travelers, diaspora members, students, specialist workers, and patients seeking treatment abroad. When a direct journey becomes a detour through a third country, time becomes as valuable as money. If the handful of remaining routes that are politically and commercially viable continue to shrink, Iran's international aviation network could be reduced to almost nothing. Combined with maritime restrictions, that isolation would leave the country increasingly dependent on its land borders—a shift that will reshape how goods, people, and services move in and out.