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Hundreds of planes carried passengers from  - after a major coronavirus outbreak - to countries in the Middle East contributed to spreading the disease in the region and defied a ban on flights from the Islamic Republic, a BBC said on Tuesday.

The first confirmed cases in Lebanon and Iraq were passengers on outbound flights from Iran, operated by the privately-owned Iranian airline, according to the investigation carried out by BBC Arabic.

The airline continued to fly despite government flight bans from Iran and "contributed to the spread of Covid-19 in the Middle East", the report said.

The BBC also claimed cabin crew and passengers flying with the airline at the time were not provided with Personal Protective Equipment (PPE), necessary to stem the spread of the virus. 

Mahan Air "put the lives of its passengers and cabin crew at risk", the report alleged.

Iran, Iraq, the UAE and Syria gave the airline the green light to carry out flights between late January and the end of March, while they barred all other companies from flying in from Iran, according to the report.

Citing unnamed sources employed by the airline, the BBC reported staff trying to raise concerns over the virus were threatened with getting sacked and "silenced".

The US has on Mahan Air citing ties to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard as well as accusations that it helped deliver Iranian arms and military personnel to Syria, to bolster Bashar Al-Assad's regime.

Iran became the epicentre of the coronavirus outbreak in the Middle East last month, with confirmed cases nearing 100,000 as of Tuesday, resulting in over 6,000 deaths.

In March, it was  that the airline's flights between Iran and China played a "key role in starting and fuelling the coronavirus outbreak" in Iran.

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The airline company is also involved in recent shipments of gold bars from Iran to Venezuela, while Iran's government has denied the allegations.


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