Iranian Government Aircraft Make Mysterious Dash To Oman

Iran’s primary presidential plane and two other government airliners have touched down in the Omani capital Muscat. The highly unusual arrivals come amid reports that the regime in Tehran is looking to negotiate an end to the ongoing conflict with Israel, as well as growing speculation that the United States may be about to directly enter the fighting in a major way.

Where exactly the Iranian aircraft, a pair of Airbus A321s and an Airbus A340, originally departed from is unclear. The trio of aircraft used the callsigns JJ25, JJ26, and JJ28. At the time of writing, there has been no official word about the purpose of the flights or who might be on them.

Publicly available air traffic control recordings suggest that a fourth aircraft from Iran may be inbound to Muscat. However, there does not appear to be any clear indication of this yet from available online flight tracking data.

As noted, the Iranian A340, which carries the Iranian registration code EP-IGA, has been used to transport Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian in the past, including to the United States for the main annual United Nations General Assembly meeting last year.

There are several possible reasons for the arrival of the Iranian aircraft in Oman.

A major Iranian delegation could have arrived in Muscat for new negotiations around ending the current conflict with Israel. Iran and Oman have solid diplomatic ties, and the latter has often served as an intermediary between the regime in Tehran and the West. Oman had just recently been facilitating talks between the United States and Iran over the latter country’s nuclear ambitions.

Iran has been reportedly reaching out to foreign partners about the possibility of a deal to end the current crisis, though publicly the regime in Tehran remains defiant in the face of ongoing Israeli strikes.

“They want to negotiate. I ask: why didn’t they negotiate two weeks ago,” U.S. President Donald Trump told reporters today, while also raising the prospect of an Iranian delegation visiting the White House. “It is very late to be talking.”

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