Iran temporarily closes airspace to most flights amid threat of US attack 

Iran temporarily closed its airspace to most flights amid United States President Donald Trump’s threats against the country, according to the US aviation authority.

Most flights were prohibited from Iranian airspace between 1:45am and 4:00am local time (22:15 to 00:30 GMT) and again from 4:44 am to 7am (01:14 to 03:30 GMT) on Thursday, according to the notices posted by the US Federal Aviation Administration (FAA).

The restrictions applied to all commercial flights without “prior approval” from Iran’s Civil Aviation Organisation (CAO), according to the notices.

FlightRadar, an online flight tracking service, showed just three aircraft over Iran as of 6:05am local time, with dozens of planes flying around the country’s borders. Iran’s airspace reopened at about 7am local time.

The FAA and CAO did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

The airspace restrictions come amid threats by US President Donald Trump to attack Iran following Tehran’s deadly crackdown on antigovernment protests in the country.

The US and the United Kingdom on Wednesday withdrew a number of military personnel from Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar, after a senior Iranian official said Tehran had warned that it would target US forces in the Middle East region if Trump launched an attack.

A number of countries have also issued advisories to their citizens in the region amid fears of escalation.

Trump appeared to lower his rhetoric towards Tehran later on Wednesday, saying he had received assurances from “important sources” that the killings of protesters in Iran had stopped.

Safe Airspace, a website run by the aviation safety organisation OpsGroup, said the airspace closures could signal “further security or military activity” and warned of the “risk of missile launches or heightened air defence, increasing the risk of misidentification of civil traffic”.

In 2020, Iran’s air defences shot down a Ukraine International Airlines flight shortly after it took off in Tehran, killing all 176 people on board.

A 2021 report by Iran’s CAO concluded that the missile battery’s operator had misidentified the Ukrainian aircraft as a “hostile object”, and that officials had not properly evaluated the risks to commercial planes amid tensions with the US.