The Brokers Who Moved Saudia’s 777s Toward Iran

The U.S. Treasury named a Sharjah broker and a Turkish firm on September 8, 2026, for moving at least three B-777 aircraft to Mahan Air. The jets, Treasury said, came from a retired fleet, took temporary marks in the United Arab Emirates, and were diverted through Oman.

That path is the same one aviation trackers had already laid over five Boeing 777-200ERs that Saudia said it sold on June 7, 2023. The carrier spent July insisting it was out of the picture. The names that mattered sat one title down the chain.

Saudia Sold the Five 777s in 2023

Saudia posted its reply on July 3, 2026, after posts tied the old green-and-gold widebodies to Mahan Air, an Iranian carrier Washington has listed since 2011. The airline said the five jets went that June to a company registered outside Saudi Arabia, in a deal it described as a standard commercial sale run under the rules that apply to such transfers.

Since the completion of the sale, Saudia has had no operational or commercial relationship with the aircraft.

Saudia, statement on X, July 3, 2026

The carrier did not name the buyer. It also did not identify the tail numbers. That silence is what a secondary-market sale looks like on paper, and it is the whole of what Saudia has been willing to put on the record.

The 777-268ER is Saudia’s customer code for the 777-200ER family, the long-range twin it used on intercontinental routes before newer 777-300ERs and 787s took those flights. Several of those older frames had already been parked for years when the 2023 sale closed. The argument inside Saudi aviation circles was simple once the histories were pulled: the airplanes had not been Saudia’s problem for a long time.

How Did the Jets Reach Tehran?

Defense analyst Babak Taghvaee put the first hard dates on the ferry. He said the second ex-Saudia 777 left Muscat for Iran on June 26, 2026, and that the United Arab Emirates and Oman had eased the handoff. On June 30 he wrote that five of the 777-268ERs had been delivered, with more still in the Gulf.

Of the five Boeing 777-268ERs delivered so far, two are currently at Tehran-Mehrabad International Airport.

Babak Taghvaee, defense analyst, on X, June 30, 2026

He added that Mahan Air was taking the airplanes for an Isfahan-based airline backed by an Iranian billionaire, a claim Treasury has not repeated. Temporary marks and short hops from Fujairah, Sharjah, Muscat, and Sohar fit the method he has tracked on earlier Iranian widebody deals. One tracker account said a jet on a C5- temporary code left Muscat on June 26 and dropped its transponder after it entered Iranian airspace.

THE PATH FROM THE 2023 SALE

1. June 7, 2023: Saudia says it sold five Boeing 777-200ERs to a company registered outside Saudi Arabia.
2. June 26, 2026: Taghvaee says the second ex-Saudia 777 is ferried from Muscat toward Iran.
3. June 30, 2026: He posts satellite images and says five airframes have been delivered, two of them at Mehrabad.
4. July 3, 2026: Saudia says it has had no operational or commercial tie to the jets since the sale.
5. July 6, 2026: ECT Aviation Support, the Sharjah company that had held several of the frames, says it played no part in moving them to Iran.
6. September 8, 2026: OFAC says Mahan Air received at least three B-777s that summer via the UAE and Oman and names the brokers.

The first public reading treated the arrival as a live deal between Riyadh and Tehran. The title had already left Saudia three years earlier, and the flying that summer was a storage-yard problem, not a flag-carrier one.

The Sharjah Firm That Held the Airframes

Fleet records later listed former Saudia 777s transferred to ECT Aviation Support under temporary C5- registrations. One of those frames, C5-ECT, previously HZ-AKW, carries a June 7, 2023 delivery date to the Sharjah company, the same day Saudia gave for the sale. Another, HZ-AKI, is listed as C5-ECI from March 15, 2025. Those records describe a wider intake of retired Saudia 777-268ERs than the five jets in the July row, and they do not, on their own, prove each airframe went on to Tehran.

ECT still denied the Iran transfer on July 6. Two months later the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control put the company on its terrorism-support list anyway, together with the people and firms around it.

THE NAMES OFAC TIED TO THE 777S

Those five names are the hidden stakeholders in the July story. Saudia’s statement was about a 2023 closing memo. OFAC’s action was about who had the airplanes when they moved.

Treasury Puts the Brokers on the List

The September 8 package sat inside Operation Economic Outcast, the campaign Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent had opened on August 24, 2026, with a determination that Iran’s aviation sector itself could be targeted. OFAC used that authority to list what it called Iran’s remaining active airlines, and it used a separate counterterrorism order to reach the foreign firms around Mahan Air.

THE SEPTEMBER 8 ACTION

• 36 targets: The full OFAC package, covering Iranian carriers and foreign support firms.
• 27 airlines: Carriers designated for operating in Iran’s aviation sector, a list that did not need to include Mahan Air because that airline has been designated since 2011.
• At least three 777s: Jets Treasury said Mahan Air received in summer 2026 after they left a retired fleet.
• Three authorizations paused: Rules that had allowed overflights and had let non-U.S. airlines fly U.S.-origin or U.S.-controlled commercial aircraft into Iran.

Bessent put the warning in public the same day.

Today, we followed through on that promise with sanctions on companies that continue to support Mahan Air. Let this be a warning to anyone doing business with Iran’s remaining airlines, all of which we sanctioned today: You are at risk of being cut off from the global financial system.

Scott Bessent, Secretary of the Treasury, September 8, 2026

Under Operation Economic Outcast, we promised severe consequences for those providing financial lifelines to the Iranian regime. Today, we followed through on that promise with sanctions on companies that continue to support Mahan Air. Let this be a warning to anyone doing… https://t.co/NPC9FMhmZu

— Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent (@SecScottBessent) September 8, 2026

OFAC said each of the three 777s originated from a retired fleet, passed through ECT, and picked up temporary registrations before the Oman-UAE diversion. It said the route closely mirrored earlier Mahan Air evasions. It did not print Saudia’s name. The match is the geography, the season, the Sharjah holder, and the temporary marks, not a line in the press release that reads “ex-Saudia.”

Treasury’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network issued a parallel alert on Iranian aviation procurement that same day, telling banks to watch for front companies buying airframes and parts in third countries. OFAC also named four cargo and general sales agents in Türkiye, Malaysia, and Kazakhstan that it said had serviced Mahan Air’s international flying, including one Turkish logistics firm accused of coordinating shipments of unmanned aerial vehicle components bound for Iran.

Mahan Air Has Used This Route Before

Mahan Air was designated on October 12, 2011, under Executive Order 13224, for providing support to Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force. The State Department added a weapons-proliferation designation in December 2019. The airline has kept flying anyway, on an old mix of Airbus widebodies gathered through middlemen rather than from the factories.

The 777 hunt is newer. In 2025, five 777-200ERs that had flown for Singapore Airlines moved toward Iran on temporary Madagascar marks after a chain of owners in Asia. That episode set off arrests in Madagascar and cost a transport minister his job. At least one of those jets was later destroyed on the ground during U.S.-Israeli strikes at Mehrabad earlier in 2026. The summer 2026 deliveries sit on the same idea with different paperwork: a retired Western fleet, a holder in a Gulf storage yard, a short ferry, and a dark last leg.

HOW THE HANDOFF IS BUILT

• A retired fleet: The airframes leave a major carrier years before they see Iran, which gives the first seller a clean closing file.
• A Gulf holder: Storage and light work in Sharjah, Fujairah, or similar yards put the jets near both the sellers and the water crossing.
• Temporary marks: C5- and other short-term codes cover the ferry without an Iranian registration on the flight plan.
• A broken route: Muscat, Sohar, Sharjah, and Fujairah split one transfer into several legal-looking sectors.
• A quiet arrival: Trackers describe transponders going dark after the aircraft enter Iranian airspace.

OFAC has been writing versions of that list for years. The September action is what happens when the same pattern shows up on U.S.-built 777s in the same summer the United States is trying to shut Iranian aviation out of the banking system.

US Export Rules Follow the Airplane

A U.S.-built 777 does not drop out of American export control because a non-U.S. airline sells it. The first seller can close a lawful deal and still leave every later owner inside a rule set that bars a transfer to Mahan Air without a license that is not going to be granted. That is why Saudia’s July letter and OFAC’s September list can both stand. One describes a 2023 sale. The other describes a 2026 movement.

What remains open is narrower than the July argument. Treasury has not published the three tail numbers it counted. It has not said that all five jets in Saudia’s sale reached Iran. It has not put Saudia on the list. Taghvaee’s Isfahan end-user is still his reporting, not an OFAC finding. And there is still no public confirmation that the ex-Saudia frames have entered scheduled service.

The brokers are the part of the story that is no longer in dispute. ECT, Sky Phoenix, Mahran, the British subsidiary, and Aerobravo are blocked persons. Property of theirs that hits the U.S. system is frozen. U.S. persons cannot deal with them. The 777s, whatever livery they wear next, already made the last hop.

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is Mahan Air under U.S. sanctions?

OFAC designated the airline on October 12, 2011, under Executive Order 13224 for providing financial, material, and technological support to the IRGC-Qods Force, which itself was designated in October 2007. The State Department added a separate designation in December 2019 under Executive Order 13382, the order aimed at weapons-of-mass-destruction proliferators and their supporters, so the carrier sits on both the terrorism list and the proliferation list.

Did Saudia break U.S. sanctions by selling the 777s in 2023?

Saudia has not been named in the September 8 action, and the airline says the June 7, 2023, sale followed the commercial and legal procedures that apply to such deals. U.S. export rules can still follow a U.S.-origin airframe after the first resale, which is why later holders, not the original operator, were the parties OFAC listed for the summer 2026 transfers.

What is a temporary registration in these transfers?

OFAC said the 777s received temporary registrations while they were held by ECT Aviation Support, a step that covers a ferry flight before an aircraft is entered on the end-user’s national register. Fleet databases show several ex-Saudia 777-268ERs later carrying C5- prefixes under ECT’s name, which is the kind of short-term mark used for those sectors.

How does this differ from the 2025 Singapore Airlines 777 case?

The 2025 batch involved five 777-200ERs that had flown for Singapore Airlines and then moved on Madagascar 5R- marks after owners in Indonesia, Madagascar, and Cambodia, a chain that led Madagascar’s police to arrest 22 people and cost the transport minister his job. The 2026 transfers Treasury described used a Gulf holder, Oman as a jump point, and Turkish and Emirati company names instead of an African register.

Saudia’s last word is still the 2023 sale. ECT’s last public word is still the July 6 denial. The list that now carries both the Sharjah company and the Turkish intermediary is dated September 8, 2026, and it is the document that closed the argument about who actually moved the airplanes.