Missiles Over Tehran: Airlines Warned As Iran Threatens Israel

by Gary Leff

Lufthansa has been cancelling its Tehran flights amidst concerns of military actions taking place. Missile launches are one possibility.

There were reports that Iran had halted all air traffic to and from Tehran. This was inaccurate, but Iran did issue a NOTAM suspending visual flight rules through April 13, suggesting safety concerns.

Rocket launches, ostensibly for ‘testing’ are cited in official communications.

I am not an expert on Iranian military strategy by any means, but I’ve assumed that telegraphing an attack from Iran in advance means that there won’t be an attack from Iran in advance – that any military action would be undertaken by a proxy, such as the Houthis. (On Thursday, the US reported shooting down 11 Houthi drones.) An attack could also come from Iran’s Quds Force in Syria. An attack directly from Iran would be more likely to trigger an attack on Iran in response.

At U.S. urging, the foreign ministers of the U.A.E., Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iraq all spoke with Iran’s foreign minister seeking to discourage attacks on Israel.

About Gary Leff

Gary Leff is one of the foremost experts in the field of miles, points, and frequent business travel - a topic he has covered since 2002. Co-founder of frequent flyer community InsideFlyer.com, emcee of the Freddie Awards, and named one of the "World's Top Travel Experts" by Conde' Nast Traveler (2010-Present) Gary has been a guest on most major news media, profiled in several top print publications, and published broadly on the topic of consumer loyalty. More About Gary »

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Comments

  1. Israel has promised to attack Iran if Iran were to launch an attack against Israel from Iran, and as a result Iran has become expert in convincing Arabs to act as it’s proxies and suffer the consequences of Israeli responses locally . . . as has happened in Gaza and now Southern Lebanon. I would expect them to continue to do this. In contrast, Iran has orchestrated several attacks against US citizens and interests both inside the USA and around the world without any negative ramifications from the Biden Administration.

  2. Reminds me of the Energy Crisis of 1973 (Part 2) and Sleep Joe refusing to top off the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

    You can’t make this s**t up!!!

  4. All airlines, heck, all entities that care about world peace should have cut off connection with Iran 40 years ago.

  6. Moe,

    Arguably, no countries have been as dangerous to peace around the world as the US and Russia in the last 25 years. About Iran and Israel, both have been problematic actors since they too have shown a willingness to assassinate people in countries with which they have both good diplomatic relations and military sales and training relationships. Should all countries have cut off connections with us and all the other countries indicated by this paragraph? Whatever the answer, try to avoid hypocrisy and double standards in answering, especially when the answer is about a disliked party.

  7. I’d be surprised if the Ayatollahs actually attack from their own territory – it’s just not what they’ve done, and for what they have so carefully worked last 20 years : build proxies in Gaza, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq to use as cannon meat.
    The Iranians in general look at the arabs as “lizzard eaters” and “camel urine drinkers” (actual words quoted), and don’t want to get their own hands dirty when they can sacrifice those inferior – in their mind – arabs (and if sunni, and not shia – even better).

  8. @GUWonder

    I am not going to argue with your point on the US and Russia.

    I will say that Iran funds much of the fighting going on the ME. From Hezbollah, to Syria, PLO, and other terrorists, if Iran would be taken out the world would be a nicer place…

  9. Years ago, Jacques Chirac asked “why would Iran fire a nuclear missile at Israel? They have to know that Israel would turn Tehran into a parking lot.” Iran probably cares a lot less if Gaza or Beirut get turned into parking lots, as post-1979 history would show.

  10. Israel has long had more nukes able to get by Iranian defenses than Iran has. That is strategic deterrent enough to keep Iran less eager for an escalation toward a head-to-head conflagration than Israel. Netanyahu is less restrained and seems itching for more and more of an escalation. The very recent Israeli strike on an Iranian consulate in Syria speaks to that and so will the likely next direct Israeli attack on Iranian government buildings.

    On some level the Saudi and Emirati establishments must really be loving what Netanyahu is doing for them against Iran even now. Before Netanyahu went wild on Gaza after October 7th last year, they were cheerleaders for Israel and happy to see Israel do their bidding against Iran.

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