TEHRAN, July 5, (Agencies): An Iranian official said on Monday the country’s aircraft had been denied fuel in Germany, Britain and the United Arab Emirates as a result of tighter US sanctions, but those countries did not confirm imposing any ban.
Pressure is mounting on Iran over its nuclear programme and the United States has stepped up its push to isolate Tehran economically. On Thursday, President Barack Obama signed into law far-reaching sanctions that aim to squeeze the Islamic Republic’s fuel imports and deepen its international isolation.
“Since last week, our planes have been refused fuel at airports in Britain, Germany and UAE because of the sanctions imposed by America,” Mehdi Aliyari, Secretary of the Iranian Airlines Union, told Iran’s ISNA news agency.
The claim could not be independently confirmed and was met abroad by scepticism. None of the three countries has announced any such ban, although officials could not rule out private firms refusing to fuel Iranian planes because of US measures.
A British government spokesman said it was unaware of any Iranian planes being denied fuel in Britain. The German transport ministry said there was no ban on refuelling Iranian aircraft, and an airport in the United Arab Emirates said it was honouring contracts to fill Iranian air craft normally.
Gala Riani at IHS Global Insight said any measure targeting the provision of fuel to Iranian flights would seem a “very strict reading” of the new US sanctions law. She said it would not necessarily be the kind of measures the legislation, which is more directed at trade in fuel, aimed to achieve.

“I’d be cautious to jump to any conclusions,” she said about the Iranian news agency report.
A spokeswoman for Abu Dhabi Airports Co (ADAC) in the UAE capital said: “We have contracts with Iranian passenger flights and continue to allow refuelling”.
Fuel traders from three different international firms said they had heard of no ban on jet fuel sales to Iranian aircraft at UAE airports. Said one trader: “You can’t allow a plane to land and then not let it buy fuel.”
Germany’s Transport Ministry said the refuelling of Iranian planes was not banned under EU or UN sanctions, nor was any such ban foreseeable. “There is no ban,” a spokesman for the ministry said, adding that he could not comment on whether any individual providers were refusing to fuel Iranian aircraft.
Although the British authorities were not aware of any Iranian aircraft having been denied fuel, a government source said: “It is a commercial decision for companies to take how they respond to the US legislation.”
The claim followed steps by the UAE this month to tighten its crucial role as a trading and financial lifeline for Iran. The UAE Central Bank asked financial institutions to freeze the accounts of 40 entities and an individual blacklisted by the UN for assisting Iran’s nuclear or missile programmes.
The US action and other measures planned by the European Union go well beyond a fourth round of UN Security Council sanctions against Iran approved on June 9.
Sanctions imposed on Iran over the past four years are having a direct impact on its nuclear programme and causing widespread bank liquidity problems, according to an exiled Iranian opposition group.
Citing intelligence gathered in Iran in the last four months, The National Council of Resistance of Iran, a Paris-based group that says it has many followers in Iran, said Tehran was struggling to get equipment for its Natanz enrichment facility.
Iran is also short of fuel for domestic use and has run into liquidity constraints at several banks, it said.
The NCRI report, compiled in June, identifies problems in several crucial areas, despite President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s dismissal last week of the fourth round of UN sanctions, imposed last month, as “pathetic”.
The NCRI, set up in Iran in the early 1980s, is regarded as a fringe faction by the Iranian government and is listed as a terrorist organisation by the United States.
But the group, which operates openly in Europe, has provided accurate information on Iran before. It was the first to expose Tehran’s covert nuclear programme in 2002.
In its report the NCRI said that at Natanz, Iran’s main enrichment facility, efforts to increase the number of centrifuges have been set back by a lack of high-strength steel once imported from Britain.
“In the current circumstances, we are facing problems with regard to obtaining the required material for building centrifuges,” a Natanz director recently wrote to Ahmadinejad.
Ahmedinejad played down on Monday the importance of the international sanctions on Tehran, based on UN Security Council resolutions, the state-run news agency, IRNA, reported.
Making the remarks at the inauguration ceremony of the development project of the Bonab steel complex in East Azerbaijan Province, he said sanctions would never affect Iranians in any possible manner.
The Iranian nation would zealously defend its country whenever it saw its dignity, identity and values threatened in the world, he stated “The Western world knew very well that Iranians’ increased efforts would lead to a situation where hegemonic powers and oppressive governments would have no place in the world,” he said.