New reports suggest that Boeing could deliver a new jetliner to IranAir within the month. According to Reuters, Boeing is reallocating a 777 originally designated for Turkish Airlines. This would be the first aircraft of eighty for which Boeing and IranAir signed a $16.6 billion deal in December 2016. Deliveries for the order, which include fifty 737 MAX 8s and thirty 777s in two variants, were originally slated to begin in December 2018.
The IranAir and Iran Aseman deals are among Boeing’s largest open orders and come at a time of softening demand for commercial aircraft among the world’s airlines.
Expectations are also high for the deal within the Iranian business community. Many business leaders in Iran, as well as their European peers, see the IranAir and Iran Aseman contracts as important bellwethers of the willingness of the United States to continue to implement sanctions relief commitments under the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) nuclear deal. Specifically, the deals are a test of whether the US Treasury’s Office of Foreign Asset Control will continue to provide licenses to both American and European companies that seek to engage opportunities in Iran. Although IranAir and Boeing were able to proceed from a memorandum of agreement to a full contract on the back of an OFAC license issued for the relevant transactions, the license was granted in the final months of the Obama administration. The Iran Aseman deal, which is currently limited to a memorandum of agreement, will only be able to proceed to a full contract when the Trump administration issues an OFAC license.
