Russia's Sukhoi undecided about delivery of passenger planes to Iran

Russia's Sukhoi Civil Aircraft is still undecided about the delivery of SuperJet 100 planes to Iran, Tasnim news agency reported on Monday.

The plan to sell planes to Iran is still in place, and it is too early to talk about canceling the deal for delivery of SuperJet 100 passenger planes to Tehran, an announcement carried by Sukhoi company was quoted as saying.

"We have not received an answer, either a positive or a negative one" from the United States regarding the approval for the plane deal, the company said.

Iran signed memorandums of understanding with Sukhoi in 2018 on the delivery of 40 Sukhoi SuperJet 100 passenger planes until 2022.

However, Maqsoud Asadi Samani, secretary of Association of Iranian Airlines, said recently that "it seems due to the lack of license issued by OFAC (the U.S. Treasury's Office of Foreign Assets Control), the arrival of the planes is out of the question for now."

Following the Iranian international nuclear deal in 2015 and removal of sanctions on Iran's aviation industry, IranAir ordered 100 from Airbus, 80 from Boeing and 20 from Franco-Italian turboprop maker ATR.

However, the U.S. Treasury revoked licenses for their sales after U.S. President Donald Trump pulled his country out of the 2015 nuclear deal in May 2018.

Only 16 aircraft, 13 by ATR and three by Airbus, were delivered to Iran before the licenses were withdrawn.

The new round of sanctions is harder to bypass than those of the past, Samani was quoted as saying by Tasnim news agency.

"Despite the difficult conditions created for the country's aviation industry, each Iranian airline has plans to buy mostly second-hand but young aircrafts," he added.