A report in Iran’s state-run Farhikhtegan exposes the collapse of Aseman Airlines: billions drained from pension funds, 28 grounded planes, and a corrupt privatization worth less than 855 billion tomans.
On September 27, 2025, the state-run daily Farhikhtegan published a damning report exposing the scale of mismanagement and corruption at Aseman Airlines, one of Iran’s largest carriers. The revelations provide a striking window into the broader collapse of Iran’s economy, where public wealth is squandered, pensioners’ funds are looted, and vital industries are brought to the brink of ruin by regime-linked corruption and incompetence.
At the center of the scandal is the Minister of Welfare, Ahmad Meydari, who admitted publicly:
“We pay 200 billion tomans from pensioners’ money every month just to cover the salaries of this company, a company that has one airplane for every 700 employees.”
This extraordinary statement underlines the depth of the crisis. Aseman employs 2,500 people but operates only three active planes, while 28 aircraft are grounded due to missing parts or regulatory restrictions. According to Farhikhtegan, the company officially owns 45 planes, yet most are unusable. Six aircraft are being stripped for spare parts, 15 cannot fly for lack of components, and two aging Boeing 727s have been permanently grounded.
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From Regional Leader to Symbol of Decay
Aseman was once among the leading airlines in Asia. By 2022, it ranked as Iran’s third-largest carrier, behind only Iran Air and Mahan Airlines. But years of mismanagement, and corruption have hollowed it out. Even official statistics now reveal a financial collapse.
Farhikhtegan notes that Aseman’s operating income fell from 177 million dollars in 2011 to just 46 million dollars in 2023, a 74 percent decline when adjusted for currency depreciation. The airline cannot cover its daily expenses, despite billions injected from state coffers and pension funds. As Meydari admitted:
“This company, which was once among the most prominent in Asia, today cannot even cover its current expenses. Injecting hundreds of millions of dollars into it will no longer work.”
This statement by a senior regime minister amounts to a confession of systemic bankruptcy.
A Sham Privatization
Even more alarming is the regime’s attempt to privatize Aseman in what appears to be yet another corrupt fire sale. Under the regime’s seventh development plan, pension funds are required to divest companies valued under 855 billion tomans. Farhikhtegan raises the critical question: is the regime really claiming that Aseman—a company with one of the largest hangars in Iran, hotels, valuable real estate, and dozens of planes—has a value below that threshold?
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An expert interviewed by the paper warned:
“If Aseman is valued below 855 billion tomans, it will be a catastrophe. The airline owns the largest aircraft maintenance hangar in Iran, hotels, valuable lands, and at least 17 to 20 planes that can be restored to service.”
The report notes that Aseman possesses assets including eight buildings in Qeshm and two plots of land in Rasht and Robat Karim, some of which have not even been formally transferred to the company’s name. Selling such a company for a fraction of its real worth would amount to looting on a massive scale.
Echoes of Haft-Tappeh
The Farhikhtegan article openly warns that the process of privatization is being carried out without oversight by supervisory institutions such as the Audit Court, the Organization for Privatization, or the Inspectorate. Instead, internal councils linked to the Welfare Ministry are running the process. The daily warns this chaotic approach could produce “new Haft-Tappehs”—a reference to the infamous sugarcane factory sell-off that became a symbol of corrupt privatization and workers’ exploitation.
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The so-called “buyers” already raise suspicions. They include:
- Karun Airlines, a small, struggling carrier;
- Homa Group, a minor ground-handling company unrelated to Iran Air;
- Katkan Asaluyeh Drilling Company, which has been inactive for seven years;
- An individual who sent a handwritten note promising to “later form a consortium”;
- A subsidiary of a regime-linked parastatal entity.
As Farhikhtegan concludes, most of these supposed buyers lack the financial or technical capacity to manage an airline. Handing Aseman to them would throw the company “from the pit into the well.”
Regime’s Looting at the Expense of the People
The revelations in this state-run newspaper are extraordinary not because they expose something new—the Iranian people have long been aware of the regime’s corruption—but because they confirm it in the regime’s own press. The fact that the government drains 200 billion tomans of pensioners’ funds every month into a collapsed airline with only three operational planes illustrates how public wealth is looted to feed an unaccountable elite.
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The broader picture is clear: Iran’s economy is collapsing under the weight of corruption, and mismanagement. Strategic industries like aviation are gutted, while the regime prepares to sell national assets for a fraction of their worth to cronies and parastatal companies. Pensioners, workers, and ordinary citizens pay the price, while the regime’s elite enrich themselves.
Aseman Airlines is thus not only an airline in crisis. It is a symbol of the regime’s corrupt economic order, where incompetence and looting have reduced once-vital industries to shells of their former selves.