Diplomats suspect sanctioned Iranian airline’s recent landings in Myanmar may have delivered weapons including guided missiles

Asia Times reported today that Iranian planes landing in Myanmar have raised speculation of secretive military-to-military cooperation, including possible sensitive Iranian weapons sales amid rising international calls to impose an arms embargo on the rights-abusing junta.

Diplomatic sources based in Southeast Asia who requested anonymity said that an Iranian delegation that landed in Myanmar on January 13 was either the second or third to visit since the military seized power and suspended democracy in a February 1, 2021, coup.  

Iran is accused of providing military equipment and weapons to several repressive regimes, as well as to Tehran-aligned belligerents in the Syrian and Yemeni civil wars. But Iran is not known to have military ties to Myanmar, which relies mostly on Russia and China as well as India for its armaments.

Moreover, in 2017, the deputy head of the Iranian Parliament called for the creation of joint military forces by Muslim countries to stop Myanmar military violence against ethnic minority Rohingya Muslims that has driven hundreds of thousands into neighboring Bangladesh and the United Nations has said could constitute “genocide.”

According to data on Flightradar24, a plane owned by the Iranian cargo airline Qeshm Fars Air flew from Mashhad, Iran’s second-biggest city, to Myanmar last Thursday. The plane returned to Iran from Myanmar the following day, the flight tracker data reveals.  

“This is the second time I have noticed an Iran flight. It is understood [to be] communication related to military technology,” Zin Mar Aung, foreign minister of the shadow National Unity Government (NUG), told Asia Times. 

“Military relations between [Myanmar’s] military junta, which seeks to adopt a military authoritarianism, and a country like Iran can be said to be a worrying situation, not only for atrocities against the Myanmar people but also from a regional and international security perspective,“ she added.

In 2019, the US Treasury imposed sanctions on Qeshm Fars Air for allegedly transporting weapons to Tehran-backed groups in the Syrian civil war on behalf of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard’s Qods Force (IRGC-QF), a military unit specialized in unconventional warfare. 

Sources monitoring the recent Iranian flights suggest Tehran may be offering to provide Myanmar’s junta with guided missiles, a procurement that would raise eyebrows in neighboring nations including Thailand and India. The junta has increasingly used aerial bombardments and helicopter-borne gun attacks against resistance forces.

Image: Qeshm Fars Air is under US sanctions but is flying freely to Myanmar. Wikiwand