The United States has granted Iraq an exemption from sanctions, allowing flights to resume between one of the country’s holy cities and Iran, Iraq’s prime minister said on Friday.
The permission eases the pressure on Iraq’s leadership, which is caught between its most important allies: the United States and Iran, longtime adversaries that are now at war.
As of late September, Iraq had ceased flights to and from Iran after broad U.S. penalties on Iran’s aviation industry. That angered Iran, as well as Iran-backed militias inside Iraq.
Now, most Iranian airlines will be allowed to operate a total of 40 flights each day between the Iraqi holy city of Najaf and Iranian destinations, the office of Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi of Iraq said in a statement.
Iraq’s foreign ministry said in a separate statement that Scott Bessent, the secretary of the U.S. Treasury, had agreed to the exemption during a meeting in Washington with Fuad Hussein, the Iraqi foreign minister, on Thursday. The Treasury did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the flight resumption.
On Thursday, the Treasury said in a statement that Mr. Bessent and Mr. Hussein “had a frank discussion” on many issues, including Shiite pilgrimages to Najaf, U.S. sanctions on Iran and Iraq’s progress in disarming Iranian militias. Mr. al-Zaidi has pledged to disarm the country’s Iran-backed militias by June.
Earlier in the week, Iraq’s transportation ministry said it had won a “special exemption” from the U.S. sanctions, which would allow Iraqi Airways, the national carrier, to fly to Iran.
Mahan Air, an Iranian airline that has been under U.S. sanctions since 2011, is not part of the exemption, the prime minister’s statement said. The United States has accused the carrier of transporting personnel, weapons, equipment and funds for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps.
The United States levied wide-ranging penalties on Iran’s aviation sector last month, part of a broader campaign to cut off revenue and economic links that it says sustain the Iranian government. As part of the measures, the U.S. Treasury said that any foreign entity “enabling” Iranian airlines, including through cargo services, would be at risk of punishment. The new measures severely reduced Iranian civilians’ air access to neighboring countries.
The Iranian government has condemned the broader campaign and airline restrictions but has been particularly incensed by the cancellation of flights between Iran and Iraq. The two countries share the Shiite Muslim faith, and Iraq is the site of Shiite Islam’s holiest sites, which millions of Iranians visit each year.
Iran’s foreign ministry issued a lengthy statement on Friday calling for Iraq to take “appropriate measures” in response to U.S. pressure. Other Iranian officials had been more pointed. Ali Akbar Velayati, a foreign policy adviser to Iran’s supreme leader, directly addressed Prime Minister al-Zaidi on social media. “Legitimacy does not come from Washington; it comes from the soil of Najaf and the blood of the martyrs,” he wrote.
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