➕ | Update: While conflicting reports circulated over the past few hours, likely to avoid public panic, the situation is now becoming much clearer, and the pressure campaign appears to be entering a new phase.

As we warned earlier, this was never a simple issue. Baghdad International Airport will stop accepting Iranian flights starting at 00:00 local time on September 23, 2026. Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization has confirmed that emergency coordination is now underway to redirect Baghdad-bound flights to Najaf in order to keep at least part of the route operational.

The aviation pressure is no longer limited to one country. After U.S. pressure, Azerbaijan has officially suspended Iran Air flights. Turkish Airlines, AJet, and Pegasus have suspended all flights to and from Iran until March 2027. Now Oman has also informed Iranian airlines that Iranian flights will no longer be permitted to enter Omani airspace, with flights already in the country departing before the restrictions take effect.

It is becoming increasingly clear that this pressure is being implemented step by step, exactly as we shared days ago. There are growing indicators that Washington is also pressuring other countries, including India and Pakistan, and announcements from them may follow in the coming hours or days. If such measures are imposed, they would have a serious impact on Iran, affecting diplomats, thousands of Iranians living abroad, foreigners living in Iran, pilgrims, students, patients, business travelers, and countless international arrivals and departures that depend on these transit routes.

At the same time, it would be a mistake to assume that these scenarios have caught Iran completely off guard. Such possibilities have long been discussed, and contingency planning is almost certainly part of Iran’s calculations. The real question is how effective this pressure campaign will become, how Iran responds, and whether its allies withstand the pressure or begin complying with it.

And yes, all of this is unfolding in the 21st century, in full view of the world.

▪️@enemywatch