Nujaba condemns halt to Iranian flights as ‘submission’ to the US

BAGHDAD — Harakat al-Nujaba condemned the suspension of Iranian airline operations at Iraqi airports as submission to U.S. pressure, the second Iran-aligned group to object this week, while the government has yet to say who ordered it.

The measure is “a dangerous precedent and a rupture in international relations between the two neighboring Muslim countries,” said Hussein al-Mousawi, Nujaba’s deputy secretary-general for media, calling it “submission to the decisions of the American occupier” and a breach of the legal and constitutional basis of cooperation between Iraq and Iran. “At a time when we are seeking independence and complete national sovereignty, the occupier comes to violate this sovereignty through its dictates and whims without deterrence,” he said, urging the government and political forces to oppose U.S. measures and not let Iraq become a platform for Washington’s policies toward Iran.

Officials have given two accounts of the halt. One said on Wednesday that private ground-handling companies, not the Transport Ministry or Civil Aviation Authority, had stopped servicing Iranian aircraft because they feared sanctions. Another said on Tuesday that the Foreign Ministry had told the Transport Ministry to halt support for Iranian aviation. Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization said Baghdad airport would stop accepting Iranian flights from midnight Tuesday and that talks were under way to redirect services to Najaf. The government has issued no official statement.

The Badr parliamentary bloc warned the government on Tuesday against implementing the sanctions and called for parliamentary scrutiny of any decision to enforce them; its spokesperson is Hamed al-Mousawi, no relation. Nujaba has resisted proposals to hand over what it calls resistance weapons while American forces remain.

The U.S. Treasury sanctioned 27 Iranian airlines on Sept. 8, and Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Iranian carriers would be effectively shut out of international aviation from Sept. 23.