Airbus deal an end to oldest anti-Iran sanction: Senior diplomat

EghtesadOnline: Iran's Ambassador to London Hamid Baeedinejad said Iran's contract with Airbus for purchase of 100 passenger planes put an end to the most prolonged sanction against the country.

News ID: ۷۳۸۸۲۳

24 December 2016

The Contract with Airbus like the one with America's Boeing is among the most important achievements of the July 2015 nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), Baeedinejad said on Saturday in a post on his Instagram page.

Despite all doubts about the possibility of a deal with France's Airbus which continued to even the latest moments, the preliminary contract was signed during the historical visit of the Iranian President Hassan Rouhani to Paris in January, said the senior diplomat.

According to IRNA, such doubts indicated that the contract with Airbus is no ordinary trade deal due to the following reasons:

1. This contract puts an end to the most long-standing sanctions against the Iranian aviation industry since the victory of the Islamic revolution in Iran. For forty years Iran has been unable to purchase new aircraft.

2. The speedy implementation of the contract deserves attention. Seven or eight of the planes will be delivered to Iran in 2017.

3. Once the new aircraft join the Iranian air fleet, the country will witness a boom in its aviation industry. Last year, Iranians purchased tickets worth about five billion dollars to foreign destinations all from foreign airline companies that in fact have taken over the Iranian market due to absence of enough number of aircraft. This is while in Iran we are suffering from unemployment among pilots and aviation industry engineers many of whom have been compelled to take jobs with foreign companies.

4. The deal, valuing at about 20 billion dollars and the credit for which will be provided in ten years through finance and sale of tickets, will result in expansion of economic cooperation with Germany, France and Britain as the main Airbus partners. It will also play an effective role in improving banking and financial relations between Iran and a number of important European countries.

5. Though the negotiations on the Airbus deal were conducted under particular conditions, the Iranian team managed to win good discount on the deal.

The Airbus company and Iran's civil aviation carrier Iran Air signed on Thursday the final contract for the purchase of 100 passenger planes, Airbus announced on its website on Thursday.

Calling the hefty contract as historical, the Europe-based multinational passenger plane producer said that according to the agreement between the company and the Iran Air, Iran can securely purchase 46 planes from the A320 family class, 38 planes from the A330 family class and 16 A350 XWBs.

The first batch of the passenger aircrafts are expected to be delivered to the Islamic Republic of Iran in early 2017.

Iran Air Managing Director Farhad Parvaresh and Airbus Managing Director Fabrice Bregier signed the new contract, the report said.

In the signing ceremony, Airbus managing director said that the general contract between the Airbus and the Iran Air encompasses issues like pilot trainings and the air traffic management.