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Iranian flights canceled as U.S. deadline to cut off Iran’s airlines passes

Treasury’s Sept. 23 deadline for companies worldwide to stop servicing Iranian carriers led to canceled routes to Gulf and Caucasus destinations, while some flights to China continued.

Motion Media News Staff

Sep 23, 2026

3 minutes

A Mahan Air passenger jet on the tarmac at an airport.

Photo: Aeroprints.com, CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0), via Wikimedia Commons (cropped) (source)

Iranian airlines canceled international flights to several neighboring countries on Wednesday, Sept. 23, after a U.S. Treasury deadline passed for companies worldwide to stop doing business with Iran's carriers.

Georgia and Azerbaijan confirmed they had suspended flights, and a Tehran travel agent told AFP that service to Baghdad, Muscat and Qatar had also stopped. Iranian flights to Gulf destinations including Dubai appeared to have been canceled, and the Iranian news agency ISNA reported that every UAE-bound flight had stopped from midnight, according to agency reports published by The Daily Star.

The U.S. campaign

Treasury sanctioned "all remaining Iranian airlines" on Sept. 8 as part of what it calls Operation Economic Outcast, which Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent announced on Aug. 24 as "Economic D-Day," according to the department's release. The action also targeted foreign firms and front companies accused of helping Iran obtain aircraft and parts, and suspended three aviation authorizations, including permission for overflights.

Bessent told CNBC on Monday, Sept. 21, that as of Sept. 23 "all the Iranian airlines will be shut down around the world." He said companies that fuel the planes, provide landing services or sell tickets would be "knocked out of the dollar system," AFP reported via Khaleej Times. On Wednesday he told Fox News that "probably more than 80 or 90 percent" of Iran's external flights "got shut down," according to AFP.

Gaps and threats

Not every route closed. A Mahan Air flight from Tehran landed in Guangzhou, China, after the deadline, according to FlightRadar24 data cited by AFP, and China said Tuesday it opposed the sanctions as illegal. Some flights to Istanbul, Najaf and Dubai were still listed, and smaller Iranian carriers kept some links to Turkey and Armenia. A senior Iraqi official told AFP that Baghdad would comply, though Tasnim reported flights to Najaf were operating normally.

Iran warned neighbors against complying. Mohsen Rezaei, whom AFP identified as head of Iran's supreme national security council, said on state TV that any country that cooperates with the U.S. would find its airports "no longer able to operate flights" to Iran. President Masoud Pezeshkian, in New York for the U.N. General Assembly, said Iranian resistance "will only intensify in the face of sanctions."

The deadline follows nearly seven months of war that began with U.S.-Israeli strikes in late February. With the fighting largely stalemated, Washington has turned to secondary sanctions aimed at third-country firms that deal with Iran, according to the agency report.

What's next

It remains unclear how many countries will enforce the ban, AFP noted, as Iran's aviation authorities worked to reroute some Baghdad flights to Najaf.