Journalist ties tanker attacks to oil middlemen, drawing treason accusations

For Iranians visiting relatives abroad, returning home has become increasingly uncertain. For those living outside the country, reaching parents, children and other loved ones in Iran is becoming just as difficult.

The disruption has left travelers trying to determine which flights are still operating, whether future bookings can be relied upon and what alternatives remain if they cannot fly.

US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Monday that US sanctions would effectively shut Iranian airlines out of international operations from September 23, warning foreign companies against providing them with fuel, ground services or ticket sales.

“All the Iranian airlines will be shut down around the world,” Bessent told CNBC. “If they land, you cannot provide them with fuel, you cannot provide them with landing services, you cannot sell them tickets, or you will be knocked out of the dollar system.”

The warning does not itself close foreign airspace to Iranian aircraft, but raises the risk of US penalties for companies and financial institutions that continue doing business with sanctioned carriers. The practical impact will depend on how governments, airports and service providers respond.

Iran International contacted multiple international airlines and four travel agencies specializing in travel to Iran to establish what options remain for passengers.

Which flights are still available?

Options are increasingly limited and can change at short notice.

Turkish Airlines has suspended all flights to Iran until at least March 2027, a company representative told Iran International by phone, adding that no services are currently scheduled before then and there is no guarantee they will resume in March.

Emirates said it is no longer operating flights to Tehran, while Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines confirmed that flights to and from Iran are suspended until at least October 24, 2026.

Both Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines said they were monitoring the situation and could not guarantee that flights would resume after that date.

Qatar Airways told Iran International that its flights to Iran are currently suspended because of airspace restrictions. Services are tentatively scheduled to resume on November 29, but the airline said that date could change depending on conditions.

Four travel agencies specializing in Iran travel said they were also unable to book operating services on airlines from Russia, China and Oman, as well as Turkey’s Pegasus Airlines and carriers serving routes from Armenia, at the time they spoke to Iran International.

One agency said it had seen Pegasus continue to accept some bookings for Iran routes that were later cancelled at short notice, forcing passengers to change their travel plans.

Iran International found some Pegasus itineraries between Turkey and Iran displayed on booking platforms from November 29, but the listings do not guarantee that the flights will operate.

Iran also did not appear as a destination option in searches on Flydubai’s or Expedia’s booking systems. Other routes checked by Iran International produced no available itineraries before March 2027.

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Those searches provide only a snapshot of what booking platforms were displaying at the time and do not establish when international services will resume or whether other routes may remain available.

How are people getting to and from Iran?

The travel agencies, which requested anonymity, said their businesses had been severely affected as passengers looked for alternatives to flying directly into Iran.

They said some travelers arriving from Western countries were flying to Turkey and then taking a roughly 17-hour bus journey to Van, near the Iranian border.

From there, travelers could cross into Iran and continue by road. The agencies estimated that reaching Tehran from Van could take another 16 to 17 hours by bus or car.

That can mean more than 30 hours on the road alone, excluding the initial flight, border crossings and waiting times.

The agencies said Mahan Air had already stopped operating from Turkish airports after losing access to ground-handling services.

The disruption followed the US Treasury’s September 8 sanctions package, which designated all Iranian airlines and also targeted three Turkey-based companies accused of providing services to Mahan Air. Treasury described the 27 sanctioned carriers as Iran’s remaining airlines not already covered by US sanctions.

Other Iranian carriers were still operating through Turkish airports as of September 21, the agencies said, but they expected those services to come under increasing pressure after September 23 as companies assessed the risk of continuing to service sanctioned aircraft.

What changes on September 23?

The US Treasury sanctioned 36 targets connected to Iran’s aviation sector on September 8, including 27 Iranian airlines. Treasury accused the aviation sector of being used to transport weapons, military personnel and illicit cargo.

Bessent said on September 21 that the restrictions would effectively shut Iranian airlines out of international operations from September 23 by targeting the foreign services they rely on.

The sanctions do not automatically prohibit Iranian aircraft from entering every country or close foreign airspace to them. But airlines need access to airports, fuel, ground handling, ticketing, banking and other services to operate internationally, giving Washington significant leverage over their ability to continue flying abroad.

Some countries have already moved to restrict Iranian carriers.

Flights by US-sanctioned Iranian airlines to Georgia stopped from September 21 after the affected carriers operated their final services the previous day, according to Georgian media. Georgia’s Civil Aviation Agency had earlier said it takes US and European sanctions mechanisms into account when granting foreign airlines access to its aviation market.

Iraq is moving even earlier than Bessent’s September 23 deadline. Two Iraqi government sources told AFP that Baghdad would suspend flights operated by Iranian airlines from dawn on Tuesday, September 22.

One official said Iraq would implement the restriction in accordance with the US Treasury decision and warned that countries failing to comply risked sanctions. A second source confirmed the decision.

The suspension could particularly affect Shiite pilgrims travelling from Iran to the Iraqi holy cities of Najaf and Karbala, as well as families and other passengers who rely on flights between the two countries.

For travelers, the central problem is that schedules displayed today may offer little certainty about what will actually operate in the coming weeks. With foreign airlines withdrawing and Iranian carriers facing new barriers abroad, travelling both into and out of Iran is increasingly dependent on a shrinking number of routes — or long overland journeys through neighboring countries.

Rising foreign exchange rates, sanctions and difficulties obtaining specialized equipment have become major challenges for the industry, where many mines still rely on traditional or semi-mechanized methods, said the report.

“There is an inverse relationship between the exchange rate and the provision of equipment; the more expensive foreign currency becomes, the less financial capacity employers have to provide safety,” Ebrahim Rahimian, executive secretary of the Tabas Workers’ House, told ILNA.

Many components used in mine monitoring and safety systems are imported and have no domestically produced alternatives, Rahimian said.

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Employers, he added, still have options to obtain equipment if they prioritize worker safety, including raising the necessary funds to purchase imported products at market exchange rates.

Deadly record in Iran’s mines

Workplace accidents, according to ILNA, remain a persistent problem in Iran, with coal mines among the most dangerous workplaces because of the conditions involved in underground extraction.

A collapse at the Parvadeh Tabas Coal Company mine killed a worker on April 29 in one of the latest fatal accidents.

A methane explosion at a coal mine in Tabas killed 53 workers in September 2024, drawing renewed attention to safety standards in Iran’s mining industry.

The economic pressures affecting mine operators have intensified as the rial has lost value, making imported machinery and specialized equipment more expensive.

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Sharp currency fluctuations have also complicated financial planning for businesses as Iran contends with sanctions and persistent inflation.

Underground mines need advanced monitoring

Coal miners working underground require more than personal protective equipment such as boots and gloves, Rahimian said.

Advanced systems, he added, are needed to continuously monitor gas concentrations and pressure in layers above underground workings, providing information directly connected to workers’ safety.

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Workers at mining companies in Tabas, Kerman, Zarand and Jiroft continue to operate using traditional or semi-mechanized methods, with only one company providing an exception, according to Rahimian.

Training is another essential part of reducing the dangers workers face underground, particularly in preparing them to respond to emergencies, he said.

“Continuous training and retraining is the minimum right of the workforce and must not be stopped at any cost.”

The combination of aging mining practices, costly imported safety technology and mounting economic pressure has left workers exposed to hazards that previous deadly accidents have already demonstrated can carry severe consequences.

The index measuring manufacturers’ raw material inventories fell to 39.3 in August from about 44.5 in July, while the Purchasing Managers’ Index for the overall economy dropped to 46.9, according to the survey. A reading below 50 indicates contraction.

Continued depletion of raw material inventories, combined with weakness elsewhere in the supply chain, could become one of the “most serious constraints on industrial production growth” in the coming months, the Iran Chamber of Commerce warned.

War damage adds to supply pressure

Part of the shortage cannot be explained by restrictions on imports alone. Iran was a major producer and exporter of several affected products, including petrochemicals and steel, before the war.

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Major petrochemical facilities in Asaluyeh and Mahshahr and the Mobarakeh Steel and Khuzestan Steel complexes were targeted during the war. Asaluyeh and Mahshahr together accounted for roughly three-quarters of Iran’s petrochemical production before the strikes.

Mobarakeh and Khuzestan Steel also sustained damage to production infrastructure.

The chamber attributed pressure on raw material stocks to limited access to foreign currency, difficulties with imports and customs clearance, goods being held at customs, logistical disruptions and higher procurement costs.

The oil and gas products sector recorded the lowest raw material inventory index at 23.3, followed by vehicles and related parts at 28.7. Rubber and plastics and the clothing and leather industries each recorded 32.2.

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Only the food industry and the wood, paper and furniture sector recorded raw material inventory readings above 50.

Input costs climb

Manufacturers also reported a sharp rise in raw material costs, with the purchase-price index increasing to 88.2 in August from 80.4 in July.

The index exceeded 100 for oil and gas products, while machinery and household appliances and non-metallic mineral products recorded readings above 92. Raw material purchase-price indices were above 50 across every industrial sector surveyed.

Other major PMI components remained below 50, including output or service activity at 47.8, new customer orders at 47.5, suppliers’ delivery times at 48.6 and employment at 47.3. All deteriorated from July except employment, which was unchanged.

Consumer prices were more than 84% higher in August than a year earlier, while annual inflation stood at about 69%, according to the Statistical Center of Iran.

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The sharp increase in manufacturers’ input costs adds to inflationary pressure on consumer prices. The Chamber warned that shrinking inventories could also reduce production capacity and disrupt or halt some production lines if current conditions persist.

Sasan Zare, spokesman for the Janfada campaign, said the main organisation of volunteers would be based around adults aged 18 and over, but acknowledged that younger people were also being brought into the initiative.

“The stronger their value system is formed from childhood, and the more familiar they become with concepts such as patriotism and self-sacrifice, the more significant the impact can be on their future,” Zare told the Iranian news agency ILNA.

Those registered with the campaign were over 15, he said, while women taking part in its training courses were over 18. For children below that age, Zare said the emphasis should be on patriotism, responsibility, first aid, safety and what he called a “culture of self-sacrifice and resistance.”

The Islamic Republic has stepped up a broad campaign to mobilise civilians since the US-Israeli war began in February.

The Janfada initiative was launched in late March, and authorities have since promoted registration through mosques, Basij bases and public events, alongside plans for military and emergency-response training.

The campaign has drawn scrutiny over the involvement of minors, with rights groups accusing Iranian authorities of recruiting children into the Basij and using them at checkpoints.

Amnesty International said in April that Iranian law allows children under 15 to join as ordinary Basij members, while those aged 15 and over can become active Basij members and collaborate with the Revolutionary Guards on assigned missions.

The rights group said it had verified evidence of children as young as 12 deployed at checkpoints and patrols, including some carrying rifles.

Iran International has separately received accounts from several provinces describing children and teenagers taking part in checkpoint operations and handling weapons at state-sponsored gatherings.

Asked specifically about teenagers being used at checkpoints, Zare said he did not know how such deployments were being carried out because checkpoints fell under the authority of local police and security bodies.

His campaign, he said, provided training related to urban and public security, while the units deploying volunteers would decide whether they were used at checkpoints.

Iranian officials often speak about oil as if the only question were whether crude can be sold today or tomorrow. In that telling, if exports stop, the oil simply stays underground until sanctions or a blockade ease, after which production can resume from where it left off.

Oil Minister Mohsen Paknejad said earlier this month that Iran’s oil exports did not stop “even for an hour” during the 40-day war. He had previously said there was not even a single day of production decline during that period.

Even if those claims are accurate for the war itself, they do not answer a more important question about what followed: how much production must be shut in when exports collapse and storage fills, and what will it cost to bring those wells and facilities back?

Energy intelligence firm Kpler estimated Iranian oil loadings fell from about 1.83 million barrels per day in March to around 255,000 bpd in August. It also estimated crude production dropped from about 3.24 million bpd to 1.755 million bpd, while inventories at terminals, refineries and other onshore storage sites increased.

Some Iranian crude may still be discharged in China, but much of that oil had already left Iran before the blockade intensified and remained for a time on tankers in Asian waters. Selling those cargoes is not the same as moving fresh crude out of Iranian wells and export terminals.

When exports fall, producers can initially divert crude into onshore storage, refineries and tankers. But storage is finite. Once it fills, the pressure moves upstream, forcing the National Iranian Oil Company to reduce production from some wells or shut them altogether.

An oil field is not an underground warehouse

An oil reservoir is sometimes imagined as an underground lake that can simply be tapped, closed and reopened months later.

In reality, oil sits within porous rock and networks of natural fractures. Its movement toward a producing well depends on reservoir pressure, rock properties, fluid composition and the way the field is managed.

That means shutdowns do not affect every well in the same way.

Some conventional Middle Eastern reservoirs can tolerate short shutdowns without serious damage. In certain fractured reservoirs, temporarily reducing output may even allow pressure to recover and oil to migrate from the rock matrix into fractures.

Robin Mills, a researcher at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, has argued that production shutdowns are unlikely to cause catastrophic or permanent damage across most of Iran’s oil industry.

He has pointed to Iran’s relatively rapid production recovery after previous declines caused by sanctions and the Covid-19 pandemic.

That distinction matters. There is little basis for claiming that shutting production will inevitably destroy Iran’s oil wells.

But recoverable does not mean free, immediate or risk-free.

Iran has many mature fields and aging wells. Ahvaz, Marun, Gachsaran and Aghajari, among the country’s most important producing areas, have been in operation for decades.

Low-pressure wells, or wells producing large volumes of water alongside crude, may fail to flow naturally after a prolonged shutdown. Restarting them can require pumping, nitrogen injection, chemical treatment or other well-servicing operations.

During a shutdown, mineral scale, asphaltenes and other heavy compounds can accumulate around the wellbore, in production tubing or in flow lines.

Corrosion, sand and solids deposition, pump failures and unwanted flows between zones with different pressures are also recognized risks.

An analysis by the Society of Petroleum Engineers’ Reservoir Advisory Committee on prolonged shut-ins warned that corrosion, deposits, pump damage and plugging can leave some wells requiring repairs, stimulation or recompletion before they return to production.

For weak-performing wells, remediation can also become expensive enough to call their economics into question.

None of those costs appears in a simple calculation of barrels that were not sold.

Rotating shutdowns also cost money

NIOC has experience managing production cuts during earlier rounds of sanctions.

One option is to rotate shutdowns among wells rather than take an entire field offline, reducing the amount of time any single well remains idle.

That can limit the risks, but it requires continuous monitoring of reservoir pressure, fluid composition, gas injection, corrosion, pumps and surface facilities.

Repeated shutdowns and restarts, changes in chemical injection and the recalibration of processing equipment also add to operating costs.

In other words, not producing oil still costs money.

If falling oil revenues squeeze maintenance budgets, what begins as a manageable shutdown can develop into a far more expensive repair problem.

The question is therefore not whether every shut well will be lost. It is how many will return without additional work, how long the others will take to restart and how much that process will cost.

Gas injection links the oil problem to Iran's gas crisis

Many of Iran’s mature oil fields rely on gas injection to maintain reservoir pressure and improve recovery.

Kpler has estimated historical gas injection into Iranian oil fields at about 4.8 billion cubic feet per day. Even before the current crisis, Iran was injecting less gas than its reservoirs required.

That problem could become more acute.

Gas production from South Pars also produces condensate. If Iran becomes unable to export, store or consume enough of that condensate, it may eventually have to reduce gas output.

The government would then face harder choices over how to allocate gas among households, power plants, industry, exports and injection into oil reservoirs.

Lower gas injection does not destroy a well overnight. But over time, it can reduce reservoir pressure and potentially lower ultimate oil recovery.

A crisis that begins with crude exports can therefore feed back into oil production through constraints on condensate and natural gas.

This part of the cost rarely features in official statements.

Iranian officials emphasize continued exports and efforts to circumvent restrictions, but disclose little about how much gas, equipment and investment is needed to maintain reservoirs while production is being curtailed.

Shared fields create another risk

Not all Iranian fields can be treated in the same way.

Azadegan and Yadavaran are shared with Iraq, Forouzan with Saudi Arabia and Salman with the United Arab Emirates, with production taking place from different parts of connected geological structures.

A reduction in Iranian output does not mean crude immediately flows across a border toward a neighboring country’s wells. Reservoir behavior is more complicated and depends on geology.

But if Iran reduces production and development for an extended period while the other side continues drilling and extracting oil, Iran’s economic position in those shared resources can weaken.

Oil left underground in such fields is not necessarily being preserved exclusively for Iran to produce later.

Continued extraction across the border can, in some reservoirs, reduce Iran’s future recoverable share or economic opportunity.

The real cost of shutting production

The impact of a forced production cut cannot be measured by lost sales alone.

It also includes the cost of storing crude, maintaining idle wells, carrying out repairs and restarts, any loss in future productive capacity or reservoir recovery, and missed opportunities in shared fields.

There can be broader consequences as well.

Lower gas production would put more pressure on power generation, petrochemical feedstock and industrial consumption, forcing the government to make increasingly difficult choices over scarce energy supplies.

A prolonged blockade and collapse in exports therefore affects more than the Islamic Republic’s immediate oil revenue.

If wells and facilities are not adequately maintained, part of the cost can persist long after exports recover.

Paknejad can point to uninterrupted exports or production during a limited period, but more important questions remain unanswered.

How many Iranian wells are now producing at full capacity? How many have been throttled back or shut? How has gas injection changed? How much is being spent to manage shut-ins, maintain equipment and eventually restore production?

Without those figures, claims of continued production offer only a partial picture of the state of Iran’s oil industry.

Most Iranian wells may eventually be recoverable. But shutting them is neither cost-free nor necessarily quick to reverse.

The longer production remains constrained, the more maintenance, reservoir management and restart costs may accumulate — costs whose full scale cannot be known without far greater transparency about the condition of Iran’s wells and fields.