The massive Iranian Boeing 747 that would arrive armed in Venezuela



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An emblematic jumbo jet of the Iranian cargo company Fars Air Qeshm landed this Tuesday at the Maiquetía Simón Bolívar international airport in Caracas, the most important in Venezuela, with reasons that are not clear and therefore have raised many questions around it. . While this is not the first time such planes have traveled from Tehran to Caracas, various complaints have triggered alarms in the United States, Colombia and Venezuela itself.

Venezuelan deputy José Manuel Olivares alerted the arrival of the Boeing 747-281F, capable of carrying up to 105 tons of cargo and denounced that, once on the ground, several people unloaded crates from the inside to transfer them “directly to highly escorted containers “.

According to several international flight tracking websites, such as FlightRadar24, the EP-FAB registration aircraft departed from Tehran, Iran, and made a stopover in Tunisia and Cape Verde before arriving in Venezuela this Tuesday around 3pm: 00, Colombia Time.

For the US Treasury Department, the cargo airline Fars Air Qeshm is controlled by the private airline Mahan Air, an allegedly strong ally of the Persian government that enjoys international recognition as a quality Iranian commercial airline. And it is that in early 2020 alone, more than a dozen Mahan Air flights from Iran brought supplies to help repair refineries in Venezuela. Iran has also sent several gasoline tankers to Venezuela in an effort to alleviate the severe shortage in the South American country.

However, the problem with Fars Air Qeshm is its natural link with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard, a powerful branch of the Iranian military that generates a lot of distrust in the United States. It is no coincidence that this plane is on some sort of Trump government blacklist for allegedly being used by Tehran to transport weapons to Syria, and even by members of the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah in Beirut. According to Reuters, in January 2019, the US Treasury Department said the company had “delivered lethal material” to Syria as “Iranian military support” to President Bashar al-Assad. Since then, the United States has highlighted the registration of Qeshm Fars Air’s two Boeing 747s: EP-FAA and EP-FAB, to warn of sanctions against any company or government that has anything to do with them.

Said cargo airline began flying in 2003 with the same two aircraft it maintains today. Its operational center is Tehran from where it serves a network of 14 destinations, all in different Asian countries. These are the destinations you travel to:

Via Wikipedia

The growing ties between Venezuela and Iran have raised concerns in Washington, which seeks to pressure Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to step down.

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