The shortest way from Tehran to Dushanbe is over Turkmenistan, and on Thursday it was closed. The way round goes north-west into Azerbaijan’s sky, east over the Caspian into Kazakhstan’s and south-east across Uzbekistan’s, and it is the route an airline takes when one neighbour’s sky is shut and the other three’s are open. Varesh is an Iranian carrier; which sanctions it meant it did not say, and the United States enacted the Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act on 18 September.
The day before the refusal, on 23 September, the Halk Maslahaty in Ashgabat adopted a national concept titled “International law and the neutrality of Turkmenistan”. The decision to close the sky to a neighbour’s carriers came, on that neighbour’s account, within a day of the document, and it was Tehran’s aviation authority, then the airline, then the Tajik press that reported it; Ashgabat’s own channels carried the holiday decree, the state awards and the president’s invitation to COP31.
The shortest way from Tehran to Dushanbe is over Turkmenistan, and on Thursday it was closed.
For Dushanbe the cost is a longer flight on 2 routes and a question about a third: Tajikistan’s fuel talks with Iran, reported this week as a request for 2.55 million tonnes a year, run on rail through third countries, and the country whose sky just closed is the one in the way. The refusal has no published reason, no published duration and no word from the state that made it.