Argentina Investigates Crew of Iranian-Venezuelan Mystery Plane

Police in Buenos Aires on Tuesday searched a hotel where the Iranian and Venezuelan crew of a mysterious aircraft parked at Argentina’s main international airport are staying.

The plane has now been grounded for over a week as Argentine authorities suspect the five Iranian crew members are operatives of Iran’s terrorist Quds Force.

The aircraft in question is a Boeing 747-300 cargo plane nominally registered in Venezuela, although Argentine officials have some questions about its true ownership. It bears the livery of cargo company Emtrasur, a subsidiary of Conviasa, Venezuela’s largest airline. 

Conviasa was sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury Department in February 2020 because it is owned by the “illegitimate” regime of dictator Nicolás Maduro, which uses the carrier to “shuttle corrupt regime officials around the world to fuel support for its anti-democratic efforts.”

The plane landed at Ezeiza Airport in Buenos Aires on June 8 with a crew of 19 and a cargo of automotive parts. The 747-300 normally requires a crew of only five, so airport officials were immediately suspicious of the flight. Their suspicions grew deeper when the pilots turned out to be Iranian rather than Venezuelan. 

The Argentines were also perturbed that the flight log lied about how many people were aboard and the plane was reportedly flying without its transponder, a tactic commonly used by smugglers.

Emtrasur representatives claimed the Iranian pilots were hired because Venezuela lacked pilots who knew how to fly the unusual aircraft. Emtrasur added the crew was unusually large because it was a training flight. The airline produced what it claimed to be a waybill for the auto parts from a Mexican company.

Investigators learned the 747-300 was sold to Emtrasur about a year ago. Before that, it was owned by Mahan Air, an Iranian company sanctioned by the United States for supporting terrorism.

Argentina reportedly received an advisory from the governments of Paraguay and Uruguay about the Iranian crew members. The advisory linked the Iranians to the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC), which has been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. government. Uruguayan officials said they would not allow the Emtrasur plane to enter their airspace.

Argentine officials confiscated the passports of the five Iranians, and on Tuesday, they searched the hotel where all crew members from the plane are staying, on the orders of a federal judge.

The raid lasted seven hours and resulted in police seizing cell phones, computers, and documents from the Venezuelan crew members.

Opposition leaders in Argentina criticized the government for allowing the plane to land at all, given the history of Iranian-supported terrorist attacks in Argentina, while government officials said the paperwork for the plane and cargo have checked out so far. 

The Iranian Foreign Ministry on Monday denounced Argentina’s seizure of the plane as a “propaganda” stunt designed to “cause a feeling of insecurity” ahead of Venezuelan leader Maduro’s scheduled visit to Tehran last weekend. Iran is also currently facing criticism from the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) for obstructing nuclear weapons inspections.

“These recent weeks are filled with propaganda, are full of psychological operations, these wars of words that want to infiltrate the minds and composure of the people,” complained Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh.