SPECIAL REPORT: Washington’s sanction shuts four Iraqi airports, and the Najaf pilgrim pays first

Najaf, two in the morning

The airport’s notice

A departures board. Two in the morning. A line that disappears.

On September 25, at 2 a.m., Najaf International Airport suspends all flights to and from the Islamic Republic of Iran until further notice. The airport’s director, Hussein Muhanna, tells AFP the decision follows a directive from the Iraqi prime minister’s office to the governor.

The airport’s notice, carried by the Iraqi News Agency according to Anadolu, asks airlines to take note. Any resumption, it says, would be announced officially.

Before the suspension, according to Reuters as cited by Voice of Emirates, 18 of the 20 flights scheduled at Najaf were bound for Iranian cities.

Eighteen out of twenty. Then zero.

Who boards

Najaf is not just any airport. It is the gateway to a holy city of Shia Islam.

According to AFP, these flights mostly carry Iraqi Shia pilgrims to Iran’s holy cities, and Iranians coming to pray in Iraq. They also carry Iraqi students enrolled in Iran. And patients going there for treatment.

A departures board is a list of cities. In Najaf, it is also a list of reasons to leave.

Eighteen flights out of twenty, and a board going blank.

Four airports out of four

Baghdad, Wednesday

Najaf is not the first. Since Wednesday, September 23, Iranian flights to Baghdad have been suspended: Iraq had ordered its civil aviation authority to do so, according to two sources cited by Reuters.

The government was then discussing diverting them to Najaf. That alternative did not last two days.

Erbil and Sulaymaniyah, Friday

That same Friday, Erbil and Sulaymaniyah, in the Kurdistan Region, suspend Iranian flights in turn, according to two Reuters sources.

Reuters does the math: flights to and from Iran are now suspended at all four Iraqi airports where they operated. Baghdad. Najaf. Erbil. Sulaymaniyah.

Four out of four, in three days.

The number says it all. Four. There is no fifth.

Washington signs. Baghdad closes the runway.

This report reads it this way: an American sanction, carried out on other people’s soil, and paid for first by those who travel.

AFP adds a detail that changes the scale. Iraqi airlines had already stopped flying to Iran in February, at the start of the war in the Middle East. Only Iranian airlines remained.

Four runways, three days, not one route left.

The map closing in

From September 21 to 25

Iraq is only one piece of the map.

According to Iran International, Iranian airlines stopped flying to Georgia as of September 21. Azerbaijan halted their services on Tuesday the 22nd. Flights to Muscat were canceled on the 23rd. On Thursday the 24th, the United Arab Emirates suspends all flights by Iranian airlines until further notice.

The Emirati civil aviation authority says it bluntly, Al Jazeera reports: the decision stems from American sanctions.

No more flights to Tbilisi. No more flights to Baku. No more flights to Dubai. No more flights to Baghdad. That same Thursday, Turkmenistan denies overflight to a Tehran–Dushanbe flight, which turns back.

What still flies

The map is not entirely dark. Bloomberg, cited by Iran International, counted at least six departures on Wednesday the 23rd, to Bangkok, Phuket, Shanghai or Kabul.

Asia remains, and Afghanistan, and China. The neighborhood is almost gone.

On Thursday, according to Reuters, Tehran’s Imam Khomeini airport no longer showed a single flight to neighboring Gulf states.

The map shrinks to the borders of the Islamic Republic.

Dubai, Thursday morning

A flight sold, then canceled

On the morning of Thursday the 24th, an Iran Airtour flight between Tehran and Dubai is canceled, Al Jazeera reports. The tickets had already been sold.

Passengers with tickets. No plane.

Dubai was, according to Al Jazeera, a major hub for Iranian airlines, with several flights a day. A routine route, struck out in a single morning.

Bank Melli first

The closing of the sky follows the closing of the accounts. According to Al Jazeera, the Emirates had already suspended trade with Iran, and their central bank had blocked transactions with Bank Melli.

On Wednesday the 23rd, according to Iran International, Bank Melli branches in the Emirates are barred from Iran-related operations, including trade finance and transfers.

Money first. Then the planes.

The Gulf’s first crossroads has picked its side.

First the accounts, then the runways.

September 8, at the Treasury

36 targets

It all starts with a statement dated September 8. That day, the U.S. Treasury sanctions 36 targets tied to Iranian aviation, including 27 airlines.

Air Shiraz. Iran Air Tour. Iran Aseman. Kish Airlines. Qeshm Air. Zagros. The list is long, and it is meant to be complete. The Treasury writes that it sanctioned all of Iran’s remaining airlines that day.

August 24

The statement rests on a decision of August 24, which Washington calls its “Economic D-Day.” It also suspends three authorizations tied to Iranian aviation, including those that allowed certain overflights.

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent warns anyone doing business with these airlines: they risk being cut off from the global financial system.

The word matters. It does not target Iran alone. It targets anyone.

A statement in Washington, a list of twenty-seven names.

Fifteen years of lists

2011, 2019, 2026

September 8 did not come out of nowhere. The Treasury says so itself.

On October 12, 2011, Washington designated Mahan Air for its support of the Revolutionary Guards’ Quds Force. In December 2019, the State Department designated it again, on proliferation grounds. In April and July 2026, the Treasury went after those who keep its planes flying.

Then August 24. Then September 8.

From one airline to a fleet

The difference is one of scale. For fifteen years, the target was one airline. On September 8, it is an entire fleet.

One airline. Then its suppliers. Then all the others.

And yet, until this week, Iranian planes were still landing in Dubai, in Baghdad, in Najaf. The change is not in the list. It is in the enforcement.

Fifteen years for one airline. One month for a fleet.

A sanction enforced on others’ soil

Fuel, runway, ticket

Early in the week, Bessent spelled out the mechanics, Reuters reports. No one can sell them fuel anymore. No one can offer them landing services. No one can sell their tickets. Otherwise, you are out of the dollar system.

Iranian airlines, he said according to Iran International, would lose their international operations as of September 23.

What Washington does not close itself

Iran International stresses the point: these measures do not automatically close a third country’s airspace. Their effect depends on governments and service providers. Each one chooses.

No embargo voted. No resolution. A threat to the dollar, and everyone else does the rest.

The signature is in Washington. The runway, in Baghdad.

That is the whole mechanism of a secondary sanction: an American order, carried out by governments weighing the dollar against their neighbors.

That is its strength. It is also its blind spot.

The decision is American. The closed runway is Iraqi.

What the Treasury alleges

Mahan Air, since 2011

The sanction has a motive, and it should be set out in Washington’s own terms.

According to the Treasury, the regime uses its aviation to move weapons, personnel and illicit cargo. It accuses the Revolutionary Guards of using seemingly private airlines, such as Mahan Air, to procure and ship weapons. Mahan Air has been under American sanctions since 2011.

These are a government’s accusations. They rest on old and repeated designations.

Readers cannot verify them for themselves. They can note their consistency, over fifteen years.

Three B-777s via Dubai and Oman

The same statement contains a detail nobody repeats. In summer 2026, the Treasury writes, Mahan Air received at least three Boeing 777s diverted through the United Arab Emirates and Oman.

The Emirates. Oman. The two countries that, this week, are shutting their doors to Iranian airlines.

Yesterday’s corridor becomes today’s wall.

Yesterday, the planes went through Dubai. Today, nothing does.

Pilgrims, students, patients

Najaf and Karbala

Now look at who is left on the ground.

There is the pilgrim who wanted to pray in Najaf or Karbala. There is the Iraqi student enrolled at an Iranian university. There is the patient who was going across the border for treatment. There is the family split by the border, visiting each other, according to Iran International. There is the trader.

None of them is named by the Treasury.

They do not carry weapons. They carry suitcases.

None of them is on a list. All of them are on a departures board.

Seventeen hours by bus

Travel agencies describe the detour to Iran International. A flight to Turkey. Then about 17 hours by bus to Van. Then another 16 to 17 hours to Tehran. Not counting the border.

A trip of a few hours by air becomes two days on the road.

A message from the agency. A canceled flight. A refund, maybe. Another date, maybe not.

Your back against a seat that is too upright. Engine noise all night. The suitcase dragged across the gravel of a border post.

In Tehran, a retired teacher wrote to Reuters, on condition of anonymity, that people there were living in an open-air prison.

The departures board has turned into a bus timetable.

Mokhber, on the 25th

The Supreme Leader’s adviser

That same Friday, the Islamic Republic answers. Mohammad Mokhber, an adviser to the Supreme Leader, writes that if Iran cannot fly or receive airport services, “no country in the region” will have that possibility either, Iran International reports.

He does not say how. He names no country, no airport.

One sentence. No method. No named target.

A threat without a method could also be an admission: in the air, the regime may have no lever left but other people’s fear.

Rezaei, on Wednesday

The threat is not isolated. On Wednesday the 23rd, Mohsen Rezaei, secretary of the Supreme National Security Council, warned the neighbors, according to Iran International: if they cooperate with Washington, their airports would no longer be able to operate.

Two men of the regime. Two days apart. One sentence, in two forms.

In those two sentences, the power in Tehran does not threaten Washington, which signed the sanction. It threatens its neighbors’ airports, which apply it.

The threat aims at the runway next door, not the signatory.

Civil aviation held hostage

The Gulf’s biggest hub

The Emirates are the leading air hub of the Middle East. Millions of passengers with nothing to do with Iran pass through.

Mokhber’s sentence puts them, in theory, among the targets. A passenger from Montreal connecting in Dubai has signed nothing. He is still in the sentence.

An airport means controllers, baggage handlers, families waiting at arrivals. A threat against a runway hits all of them. Without distinction.

What is a threat worth when it says neither where, nor when, nor how?

The foreign airlines

Foreign airlines have already chosen caution. According to Iran International, Turkish Airlines has no flights to Iran scheduled before March 2027. Emirates no longer serves Tehran. Lufthansa and Austrian have suspended their flights until October 24. Qatar Airways mentions, without certainty, November 29.

And yet the sanction did not empty these routes alone. Several foreign airlines had pulled out before it, and Qatar Airways cites airspace restrictions. The sanction finishes what the war began.

One sentence from Tehran is enough to make Gulf skies nervous.

What the sanction does not close

The road

An honest report also states the limits.

It does not close the sky. It does not close the road. It does not close Kabul, or Shanghai, or Yerevan.

Land routes between Iraq and Iran remain open, AFP notes. The pilgrim can still get through. Slower, costlier, wearier.

The effect also depends on how long it lasts. A week of closure is not a year.

February, already

And the break did not start this week. Iraqi airlines had stopped flying to Iran back in February, according to AFP. The sanction shuts the last door of a house already half closed.

The Treasury promises, in the same statement, to review aviation-safety requests case by case. It is a safety valve. It is not meant for pilgrims.

And yet the heaviest limit lies elsewhere: the regime itself reportedly has other routes than its passengers do.

The pilgrim takes the bus. The regime keeps its routes.

Baghdad’s calculation

A directive from the prime minister

Iraq is the most delicate case. The bond between the two Shia-majority countries runs deep, AFP writes, shaped by religion and by politics.

Several sources, including a senior government official, had nonetheless warned AFP early in the week: Iraq would apply the American ban. The directive came from the prime minister’s office.

A directive. A governor. An airport. A notice at 2 a.m.

The dollar or the road

Between Bessent’s threat and Tehran next door, Baghdad chose the dollar. Without saying it in those words. By sending a directive to a governor.

Voice of Emirates writes that these suspensions aimed to avoid American sanctions against the airports and their service providers. That is the very logic of a secondary sanction.

A government did not sign the sanction. It carries out the enforcement, and bears the anger of its pilgrims.

Baghdad signed nothing. Baghdad closed everything.

Three possible outcomes

If the ban holds

First scenario: the ban holds. According to Reuters, a lasting ban would deepen Iran’s isolation and worsen its economic crisis, already marked by an American blockade of its ports.

Second scenario: Tehran negotiates, country by country. According to Al Jazeera, the spokesman for Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization, Majid Akhavan, says talks are under way with the Emirates. Iran International reports exchanges with Oman.

If Mokhber acts on it

Third scenario, the darkest: the Islamic Republic carries out its threat against a neighboring airport. Nothing so far says how. Nothing says it will not be tried.

I admit I do not know which of the three will prevail. I only know which one will cost the most to those who decided nothing.

In all three, the Najaf pilgrim is not at the table.

None of these scenarios reopens Najaf tomorrow morning.

Three scenarios, and the same passenger missing from the table.

The pilgrim pays, not the Supreme Leader

A tool, a person

The sanction targets a regime Washington accuses of moving weapons on its planes. This column’s line does not dispute it: the Islamic Republic is a threat, and its aviation, according to the Treasury, is one of its tools.

But the week shows where the cost falls. It is not the Supreme Leader who takes the bus from Van. It is not Mokhber looking for a ticket through Istanbul. It is not a Revolutionary Guard giving up on Karbala.

It is a pilgrim. A student. A patient.

The sanction is a tool. The cost is a person.

At the check-in counter

How far do we accept that legitimate pressure on a regime be paid for first at the check-in counter of those who signed nothing?

In Najaf, the departures board shows other cities.

The Tehran line is gone.

Washington signs, Baghdad closes, and the Najaf pilgrim stays grounded.

Sources:

Primary Sources:

• U.S. Treasury — sanctions on 36 Iranian aviation targets, September 8, 2026
• Reuters — three Iraqi airports suspend Iranian flights, September 25, 2026
• AFP via Arab News — Najaf suspends Iranian airlines, pilgrims and patients, September 25, 2026

Secondary Sources:

• Iran International — Mokhber’s threat and the map of cut flights, September 25, 2026
• Al Jazeera — the UAE bars Iranian airlines, September 25, 2026
• Voice of Emirates — Iraq closes all its airports to Iranian flights, September 25, 2026