Iran air disasters: Are US sanctions endangering passengers?

An Iranian passenger plane missed the runway and skidded onto a major highway in the country’s southwestern Khuzestan province on Monday. Miraculously nobody was killed and just two passengers sustained injuries. The incident is the latest in a string of disasters to strike Iran’s civilian and military aviation sector, which, like much of the economy, is squeezed by US sanctions. 

According to Iranian state media, the US-built Caspian Airlines McDonnell Douglas MD-83 plane missed the runway after the pilot brought it in harder than usual, damaging the plane’s landing gear as it touched down. 

It is not clear whether this was the result of pilot error or a technical malfunction aboard the ageing aircraft. 

Technical malfunction would not be unprecedented. Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the US has spearheaded wide-ranging sanctions against Iran alongside a complete arms embargo. 

As a result, Tehran not only finds it difficult to acquire new Western aircraft, both civilian and military, but also has a hard time sourcing spare parts for many Western-made aircraft it operates, many purchased during the reign of the last Shah. 

Iran has suffered a spate of accidents as a result of malfunctioning aircraft over the years. 

On January 9, 2011, an aged Iran Air Boeing 727 suffered a double engine flame-out in icing conditions and crashed at Urmia Airport, killing 78 of the 105 passengers and crew aboard. 

On August 24, 2008, an Iran Aseman Airlines Boeing 737 also crashed due to technical difficulties, killing 65 of the 85 people aboard. 

On December 6, 2005, a US-built Iranian C-130 Hercules military transport plane suffered engine trouble and crashed into an apartment building near Tehran. The crash killed all 94 passengers and crew and 12 people on the ground. 

Several other crashes include Russian-built aircraft, both commercial and military. 

While sanctioning Iranian military air power is one thing, the US has justified slapping sanctions on Iran’s commercial aviation because Tehran has used its commercial airliners for military purposes. 

From as early as 1982, Iran Air flights ferried Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) members to Damascus and from there to Lebanon’s Beqaa Valley to help train the emerging Hezbollah group. 

The US directly sanctioned Iranian airline Mahan Air, which primarily operates European-made Airbus passenger planes, “for providing financial, material, or technological support for or to the IRGC-QF,” the extraterritorial Quds Force.

“Since the onset of the Syrian civil war, Mahan Air has routinely flown fighters and material to prop up the [Bashar al-] Assad regime, which has contributed to mass atrocities and displacement of civilians,” charged the US Treasury in a December press release. 

In January 2019, Germany banned Mahan Air from its territory, citing security concerns and the airline’s military transport flights to Syria.

The following March, France also banned Mahan from using Paris Charles de Gaulle, while Italy followed suit in December. 

Such bans were a clear setback for Iran. Back in 2015, after signing the nuclear deal with the United Nations Security Council’s five permanent members plus Germany, Tehran announced plans to upgrade its commercial airliner fleet with as many as 90 new Airbus and Boeing aircraft per year.

The plans were ultimately scuttled when President Donald Trump withdrew the US from the Iran nuclear deal in May 2018. Iran took delivery of just three Airbus planes but no Boeing aircraft between the signing of the nuclear deal in July 2015 and the reimposition of US sanctions. 

American sanctions can also effectively block any Airbus sales to Iran, since they require American parts.

In 2018, Iran contemplated buying a fleet of smaller Sukhoi Superjet 100 regional jets from Russia, figuring they could bypass US sanctions since the Russian aircraft had far fewer American-made parts. 

However, much to Tehran's chagrin, it turned out that 10 percent of the Superjet’s parts are sourced from the US, meaning Sukhoi needed US approval to sell the jets under their current configuration. 

Iran also missed out on an opportunity to upgrade its ageing air force with Russian Sukhoi Su-30 multirole jet fighters. Tehran will likely reconsider buying these aircraft next October if and when the UN Security Council lifts its arms embargo on Iran as scheduled.

For now, Iran’s air force mainly consists of older US warplanes and helicopters, chief among them the F-14 Tomcats, F-4 Phantoms, and F-5 Freedom Fighters, along with AH-1J SuperCobra attack helicopters and CH-47 Chinook heavy-lift helicopters. 

These ageing aircraft were all bought by the Shah in the 1960s and 1970s and saw extensive use throughout the bloody eight-year Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s. Although their airframes are very old, Iran has managed to maintain these aircraft and even upgrade several of them. 

In fact, Tehran defied initial American expectations after the ’79 revolution that Iran could not maintain an air force, particularly the sophisticated F-14s, and keep them airworthy in the event of war without continued US support, much like the Saudi military today. Iran not only kept large parts of its American-made air force airworthy without continued US support but did so in defiance of an arms embargo and no steady supply of spare parts. 

So fearful was the United States of Iran’s ability to continuously field F-14s that it shredded its entire fleet in 2007 to ensure no parts were smuggled from the US to Iran.

Iran’s last significant supply of additional military aircraft was in the early 1990s when part of the Iraqi Air Force flew to Iran during the 1991 Persian Gulf War, and Tehran bought a small fleet of MiG-29 Fulcrums from Russia. 

Iran reverse-engineered and also built a few new derivatives of the F-5 over the years.   

Despite these efforts, Iran’s air force remains mostly outdated and accidents are not an irregular occurrence. 

For instance, in late August 2018, an Iranian F-5F suffered a double engine fire and had to make an emergency landing. While the co-pilot was able to eject the pilot was killed as a result of a faulty ejection seat that was supposed to have been replaced 40 years ago. 

Early last August, an Iranian F-4 suffered technical issues and crashed in the Persian Gulf. Both pilots ejected safely.

Tom Cooper, a widely published author on military aviation, does not believe Iran faces any serious problem keeping its civilian aircraft operational. 

“Generally, Iranian airlines and local maintenance companies have no problem to acquire whatever spare parts they need, regardless, if for Boeing or Airbus-made aircraft,” Cooper told Rudaw English. 

“Where there is a problem is that the majority of Iran’s Boeing-made types are very old, and thus it’s increasingly hard to get spares for them – no matter where, or for whom.”

Regarding military aircraft, Cooper says Iran would also face little problem keeping its planes airworthy, just so long as the IRGC permits sufficient funding for the Islamic Republic of Iran Air Force (IRIAF) – which it has not. 

“The same is therefore also decisive for how much longer the IRIAF can keep its US-made aircraft operational,” he added.

Unless Tehran acquires newer aircraft for both its air force and commercial fleet over the next decade, more and more accidents like the above are inevitable.