Nada Salam

The Iranian planes landing at an airport in an Iraqi province were more than a means of transport once the airport stopped receiving them. In the debate that followed, they became a test of sectarian loyalty: those who opposed the ban were said to be protecting the “holy sites,” while those who accepted it were accused of abandoning them. This is how the sacred becomes a commodity: a believer’s right to visit a shrine is reduced to one airline’s right to land at an Iraqi airport, even if its aircraft were equipped to smuggle money and weapons.

The flights were suspended after the United States warned of the consequences of providing services to sanctioned Iranian airlines. Iraqi airports, including those in Baghdad and Najaf, complied with a directive from Prime Minister Ali al-Zaidi’s office. It may be legitimate to oppose the American sanctions, and it may be legitimate to question the government about its reasons for complying and the cost to passengers. But a political objection grounded in sectarian identity loses its meaning when an airport becomes a place to prove sectarian allegiance.

The Iranian consulate in Najaf expressed this logic plainly when it asked how the airport of a city housing the shrine of the first Shia imam could be closed to “the largest Shia country in the world.” The question is loaded, and it deliberately changes the subject. The decision concerns flights between two states; the shrine belongs to no state, airline or political authority. Visitors may suffer when their flights are cancelled, and that harm is real. But turning their hardship into an argument for granting Tehran a special right in Iraqi skies is an appropriation of the “sacred” in the name of protecting it.

Inside Iraq, some of Iran’s allies went beyond protest. Akram al-Kaabi, leader of the Nujaba movement, which is aligned with Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, called for preparations to stage sit-ins at airports if flights were not restored. That raises a question that should not be lost amid the shouting: can the government manage its country’s airports when an armed faction disagrees with it, or does air traffic become hostage to that faction’s ability to mobilise supporters?

Sovereignty is not achieved by invoking it against Washington and then setting it aside when a relationship of dependence on Tehran is at issue. If the American decision puts pressure on Iraq, that is a reason to hold the government accountable for its choices and seek alternatives that protect Iraqis. It is not a licence for any cross-border group to decide, in the state’s place, which plane may land and which decision may be enforced. An Iraqi who supports the government’s authority over an airport is not declaring hostility toward Iranians. Nor does an Iraqi concerned for patients, students and pilgrims become a submissive follower of Iran.

Iraqi skies belong to no sect, denomination or group that refuses to recognise its own country’s sovereignty. And the “holy sites” are too significant to be sold off in a contest of political one-upmanship, or used to extract a political privilege from a state that is supposed to govern its own territory rather than serve as someone else’s backyard.