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Flying Iran's Hazardous Skies - One Effect of Western Sanctions

[Weekly Standard] Reuben F. Johnson - A Russian-made Tupolev Tu-154M airliner operated by Caspian Air crashed last week after take-off from Iran's Imam Khomeini airport, killing 168 passengers and crew. In February 2006, a Tu-154 operated by Iran Airtour crashed during a landing in Tehran, killing 29 of the 148 people on board. An Ilyushin Il-76 cargo aircraft crashed in 2003, while another Tupolev operated by Airtour crashed in 2002 in western Iran, killing all 199 persons on board. The 1996 U.S. Iran-Libya Sanctions Act (ILSA) prohibits the sale of most U.S. and European-made commercial aircraft to Iran. As a consequence, the country continues to utilize a combination of aging Western and Russian aircraft - all of which are becoming increasingly unsafe. The only countries Iran has no problems purchasing passenger aircraft from are Russia and China, but most of Russia's commercial production lines are shut down and China's only modern-design regional airliner, the ARJ21, has too many major U.S. components in its configuration to get past the ILSA embargo lists. The deaths from operating aircraft past their useable service life are another casualty of the increasing isolation that the Ahmadinejad regime has brought on its own people.
2009-07-23 06:00:00
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