Iran’s flag carrier IranAir will resume direct flights between Tehran and Rome after four years of suspension and under a new agreement reached between aviation authorities of Iran and Italy.
Iran’s official IRNA news agency said IranAir’s Tehran-Rome flights will resume on July 14.
IRNA’s London office said in a report that the route relaunch had been finalized during a meeting between Iran’s civil aviation chief Mohammad Mohammadi Bakhsh and his Italian counterpart Alessio Quaranta. The report did not elaborate on when and where the meeting had been held.
It said Mohammadi Bakhsh and Quaranta signed a revised version of the aviation cooperation agreement between Iran and Italy while emphasizing the need for increased flights between the two countries to help boost tourism and economic ties.
Under the new agreement, the IranAir will also increase the number of its current flights between Tehran and the Italian city of Milan, said the report.
Aviation ties between Iran and Italy took a hit in 2018 under pressure from a former American government that pulled out of an international deal on Iran’s nuclear program and imposed sanctions on the country.
Italian officials refused to renew flight licenses for Iran’s second largest airline the Mahan Air in November 2019, a month after former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo traveled to Rome and urged Italy to ban the airline from the country’s airspace.
IranAir’s plans to resume flights between Tehran and Rome to replace the Mahan Air route was cancelled because of the spread of coronavirus in early 2020 as both Iran and Italy became hotspots for the disease and imposed severe restrictions on aviation activities.