Baghdad Seeks US Exemption to Restore Iran Flights as Pilgrimage Routes Stay Grounded

Iraqi officials are negotiating directly with Washington to win exemptions for several of the country's airports from the latest US aviation measures aimed at Iranian airlines, according to a statement from the office of Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi. The talks come after four Iraqi airports suspended all flights to and from Iran on Friday, days after the United States announced new sanctions penalising any global company that does business with Iranian carriers.

The suspensions hit the country's four main gateways — Baghdad, Najaf, Erbil and Sulaimaniyah — leaving passengers with no alternative but to resort to overland travel, some of which now takes at least 12 hours. The closures represent a sharp reversal for a route that, in normal times, functions as a key corridor for religious tourism, family visits and business travel between two neighbouring countries.

The measures build on a week of disruption. Ahead of the US sanctions taking effect, Iran cancelled flights to Baghdad and Muscat, with the losses already being felt by airlines and passengers before the Iraqi closures were announced. Washington framed the measures as applying to any company anywhere in the world that continues to operate with Iranian airlines, giving the restrictions a reach far beyond the immediate region.

In its Saturday statement, al-Zaidi's media office said US exemptions covering Baghdad would allow flights to resume "on humanitarian grounds related to medical treatment, education, religious visits, and the interests of civilians". The wording suggests Baghdad is pitching its request around the vulnerability of ordinary travellers rather than any commercial argument, a framing designed to make an exception easier for Washington to justify politically.

The same statement acknowledged the wider pressures on the Iraqi government, saying Baghdad was working to de-escalate regional tensions and warning that "the continuation of crises further complicates the situation". It called on all parties to pursue dialogue and negotiations to end the current crisis and conflicts "in the interests of the region's countries and peoples" — language consistent with an Iraqi government trying to avoid being drawn further into a conflict it did not start.

Stakes are highest at Najaf, where flights normally carry large numbers of Iraqi Shia Muslim pilgrims to Iran's holy cities, while Iranians travel in the opposite direction to visit sacred sites in Iraq. Both countries are Shia-majority, and the Najaf route carries religious traffic that is difficult to divert. With aircraft grounded, pilgrims have been pushed onto long road journeys, and it is those pilgrims and their families who have become the most visible face of the disruption.

That visibility surfaced in the Iraqi capital, where a large number of demonstrators gathered in Baghdad on Saturday against the flight suspensions, in a protest organised by Iran-allied Iraqi militias. Their presence underscored how closely domestic politics in Iraq is tied to the standing of Tehran, and how quickly transport policy can be pulled into the orbit of the wider regional conflict.

Later the same evening, dozens of scholars and students from the Hawza of Najaf — described as the oldest and most influential Shia seminary in the world — held a vigil against the suspension of Iranian flights, according to Shafaq News. A statement read out by the seminary's Scholarly Assembly condemned the halt, saying it came at a moment when "the peoples of the region are most in need of strengthening the bonds of brotherhood". The assembly urged the government to "maintain the independence and sovereignty of Iraqi decision-making" — a pointed message in a dispute in which Baghdad is asking one foreign power for relief from measures imposed at the behest of another.

Diplomatic channels, however, remained active. Iraq's ambassador to Tehran, Yasser al-Hajjaj, said the suspension would be temporary and would not affect relations between the two countries. Speaking to Iraq's state news agency, he said Baghdad was in contact with Iranian authorities to restore normal air traffic as soon as possible, adding that Iraqi-Iranian ties are "too deep to be affected by a temporary crisis".

To support that argument, al-Hajjaj pointed to the scale of the interdependence: roughly 100,000 Iraqi students are enrolled at Iranian institutions, an Iraqi community of hundreds of thousands lives in Iran, and thousands of crossings take place between the two states every day. Each of those groups, he implied, is a constituency with an immediate stake in the resumption of flights.

Iran's side offered similar reassurance. Mohammad Kazem al-Sadegh, the Iranian ambassador to Iraq, said officials from the two countries were in contact and that a new decision on flights was likely to be announced soon, Iran's IRNA news agency reported. The message from both embassies suggests the suspension is being treated by Baghdad and Tehran as a practical problem to be solved quickly, even as the dispute that triggered it remains unresolved.

Al Jazeera's Jack Hewson, reporting from Baghdad, framed the difficulty of Iraq's position in starker terms. "Iraq is in a difficult situation, allied both to America and to Iran. At times like this, it is squeezed between the two," he said. "Some blame Iran for this, feeling that Iran is too controlling of Iraq. Others blame the US and Israel for having started the war in the first place."

Hewson said that regardless of where fault lies, "Iraq remains in a very delicate position between all of these larger and more powerful states, continuing to suffer economic consequences and the fallout itself." His assessment points to the underlying asymmetry of the situation: Iraq can lobby for a carve-out from Washington, but it has little leverage over the decision itself, and its economy is bearing costs that neither of its larger partners is accounting for.

What happens next hinges on whether Washington grants the Baghdad exemption, and on how quickly Tehran responds. An exemption covering even one airport would relieve some of the pressure on the worst-affected travellers, particularly those making time-sensitive medical journeys or religious trips, and would give Baghdad a visible win. A prolonged standoff, by contrast, would deepen the sense — expressed by Iraq's neighbours, its militias and its religious establishment alike — that decisions about the region are being made far from Baghdad.

For now, all three parties are talking and none is walking away. But with negotiations continuing and no timetable published, the 12-hour road journeys remain the only option for those who cannot wait.