Iranian flights to Gulf neighbours including travel hub Dubai appeared to have been cancelled on Thursday after a US deadline passed for global firms to halt work with Iran's airlines, a major step in a campaign President Donald Trump calls "economic D-Day".
An aircraft belonging to the Iranian airline Qeshm Air © Mena Today
Iranian flights to Gulf neighbours including travel hub Dubai appeared to have been cancelled on Thursday after a US deadline passed for global firms to halt work with Iran's airlines, a major step in a campaign President Donald Trump calls "economic D-Day".
With the US-Israeli war against Iran largely stalemated for months on the battlefield, Washington has announced a shift in tactics to extend the reach of its financial sanctions by targeting companies from third countries that do business with Iranian firms, a practice known as "secondary sanctions".
Trump referred to the new strategy last month as "economic D-Day", comparing it to the assault on Nazi-controlled France in World War Two by the United States and its allies.
The US Treasury had set September 23 as the deadline for companies worldwide to comply with an order to stop doing business with Iranian airlines. Washington says the aim is to ground the entire global Iranian civilian fleet.
Iran threatened on Wednesday to retaliate against any neighbouring countries that comply with the US ban on its flights, by making their airports "unusable".
There were no immediate public announcements from countries that they were halting flights, but Iran's ISNA news agency said all flights to the United Arab Emirates, the Gulf's biggest travel hub, had been halted as of midnight.
No arrivals or departures to Iran were visible on the website of Dubai or Abu Dhabi airports on Thursday. Websites of at least two Iranian airlines, Qeshm and Varesh, showed UAE flights had been cancelled. The UAE's General Civil Aviation Authority and Dubai Civil Aviation Authority did not respond to requests for comment.
The website of Iran's Imam Khomeini Airport in Tehran showed departures and arrivals on Thursday were still scheduled to and from countries including Afghanistan, Armenia, China, Iraq, Pakistan, Tajikistan and Turkey, but not nearby Gulf states. ISNA said a flight to Tajikistan had also been turned back because Turkmenistan had closed its airspace.
A flight ban, if sustained, could deepen Iran's isolation and worsen an economic crisis in the country, which is already facing a US blockade of its ports at sea.
Saudi Arabia intercepted six ballistic missiles fired by Yemen's Iran-backed Houthis on Thursday, thwarting attacks on the southern province of Taif and Yanbu area on the Red Sea, the Saudi-led coalition in Yemen said.
Yemen's Saudi-backed government forces repelled overnight attacks by the Iran-backed Houthis on a key supply route to the southern port city of Aden where the internationally recognised administration is based, government sources said on Thursday.
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said in a speech at the UN on Wednesday that Tehran would never surrender to the US but still believes in diplomacy, a day after President Donald Trump used the same forum to threaten to "annihilate" Iran.
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