Iran has reopened its airspace after temporarily halting most flights overnight amid escalating tensions with the United States and threats by President Donald Trump to attack the country over alleged crackdown on protesters.
According to notices posted by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), commercial flights were prohibited from entering Iranian airspace between 1:45 a.m. and 4:00 a.m. local time (22:15 to 00:30 GMT), and again from 4:44 a.m. to 7:00 a.m. (01:14 to 03:30 GMT) on Thursday. The FAA said the restrictions applied to all flights without “prior approval” from Iran’s Civil Aviation Organisation (CAO).
According to Aljazeera, flight-tracking service FlightRadar showed only three aircraft flying over Iran as of 6:05 a.m. local time, with dozens of others diverting around its borders. The country’s airspace was fully reopened around 7:00 a.m., reports said.
Neither the FAA nor the CAO immediately responded to requests for comment.
The temporary closure came hours after President Trump renewed threats of military action against Tehran following a violent crackdown on anti-government protests in Iran. The United States and the United Kingdom also withdrew some military personnel from the Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar on Wednesday, after a senior Iranian official warned that Tehran would target US forces in the Middle East if Washington launched an attack.
Several countries have since issued advisories to their citizens in the region amid growing fears of escalation.
Trump later appeared to soften his tone, saying on Wednesday that he had received assurances from “important sources” that the killings of protesters in Iran had stopped.
Aviation safety analysts warned that the temporary closure could point to deeper security concerns. Safe Airspace, a website run by the aviation safety organisation OpsGroup, said the restrictions might indicate “further security or military activity,” adding that there was a “risk of missile launches or heightened air defence, increasing the risk of misidentification of civil traffic.”
In 2020, Iran’s air defences shot down a Ukraine International Airlines passenger jet shortly after takeoff from Tehran, killing all 176 people on board. A 2021 report by Iran’s Civil Aviation Organisation concluded that the missile battery operator had misidentified the aircraft as a “hostile object,” and that officials failed to properly assess risks to civilian flights amid heightened US-Iran tensions.
