Mahan Air (W5, Tehran Mehrabad) is looking to start non-stop flights between Iran and Venezuela after it operated a one-off service between the two states on Sunday, April 8. Flightradar24 ADS-B data shows the airline conducted the 15-hour long flight between Tehran Imam Khomeini and Caracas Simón Bolivar using A340-600 EP-MMR (msn 615).
According to the Iranian Civil Aviation Organization (CAO.IRI), the flight ferried Iran's deputy foreign minister, Seyed Abbas Araghchi, and a delegation of Mahan Air officials, including its vice chairman, to discuss the re-establishment of flights between Iran and Venezuela.
IranAir ran weekly B747SP-operated return flights, codeshared with Conviasa, from Tehran to Caracas with a stop in Damascus, Syria between 2008 and late 2010.
According to the Associated Press, Western intelligence agencies at the time believed the flights were being used to ferry "illicit" materials between the states and to bring members of both Hezbollah and Hamas who are based in Venezuela to Iran for injection into Syria and Lebanon.
The United States, which has already sanctioned Mahan Air for its alleged links to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), said on Monday, April 9, that it would formally designate the IRGC a Foreign Terrorist Organization on April 15.
