Boeing receives US permission to sell planes to Iran
Boeing Company has announced on Wednesday that it has received US approval to sell its planes to Iran after almost 40 years.
According to a report by Bloomberg, the permission had paved the way for the biggest business transaction between the two nations since the 1979 Islamic Revolution in Iran.
'The US Treasury Department granted licenses to Boeing and Airbus Group SE on Wednesday for the first of a flurry of aircraft orders that Iran is counting on to upgrade an aging fleet,' Bloomberg reported.
Airbus won approval to export the first 17 jets in a $27 billion transaction announced in January as economic sanctions were eased after the implementation of the landmark nuclear deal between Iran and the world sextet (US, Britain, Russia, France and China plus Germany) better known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) started.
Boeing is still finalizing terms to provide as many as 109 jets to Iran Air, the Chicago-based plane-maker said in an e-mailed statement.
“Any final sales agreement would have to adhere to the license we’ve been issued,” Bloomberg quoted Mark Sklar, a spokesman for Boeing as saying.
Iran's Minister of Roads and Urban Development Abbas Akhundi has recently said that Iran expects the US Department of Treasury to remove the obstacle to buy airplanes.
'I hope the limitations could be removed soon so that we can buy airplane,' Akhundi said on the sidelines of the second conference on investment opportunities in Iran's aviation industry.
Vice-President of Boeing Company Martin Bentrott had earlier told IRNA at the 1st Global Conference on Sustainable Transport in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan, that the company has no problem to sell airplane to Iran adding that the circumstances for getting permission from Office of Foreign Assets Control (OFAC) is satisfactory.
OFAC is a subsidiary for the US Treasury Department.
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