A view on the Mehrabad Airport Terminal in Tehran
As the Iranian public persists with weeks of angry protests against the country's clerical regime, reports from Tehran's airport suggest some senior officials may have begun to pack their bags and leave the country.
Ordinary Iranians will wonder where they could go to hide, given Tehran's relative lack of friends and allies around the world. They may travel to countries the regime has helped in past decades — even if they are not the first-choice destinations for anyone keen to enjoy their ill-gotten gains. A quick look around the world map limits the choices.
One refuge may be socialist Venezuela, run by Iran's authoritarian ally President Nicolás Maduro.
The regime's top destination
An unnamed source at Tehran's Imam Khomeini Airport told Kayhan-London that currently three flights a day were taking off with "a considerable amount of cargo" bound for Venezuela.
The source said: "these people get their suitcases out in hours, with fewer passengers and flights. This began about two weeks ago, and we see these movements about two or three times a day."
Why would Islamic officials now want to flee to a delectably "indecent" land of bikinis and booze?
"Initially," the source said, "my colleagues and I thought these were embassy employees, though we noticed their car number plates didn't belong to any embassy. We don't know what they are shifting, and whether they are leaving the country with all the luggage or not. Because they won't let us examine closely. We just know that in past weeks, every day there are three to four flights to Venezuela."
Venezuela President Nicolas Maduro with his Iranian counterpart Ebrahim Raisi during a visit in Tehran
Special flights
If the cargo belongs to officials, presumably they will follow sooner or later. The Daily Express, a London paper, reported in late October on rumors of Iranian politicians looking for UK, Canadian and Swiss passports as they seek to flee Iran. Its report also described special flights leaving Tehran outside the standard airport schedule.
In mid-October, the website Flightradar24 also observed an increase in "suspect" flights from Iran for places like Georgia and Belarus. In late October, Britain's Foreign Office minister (a deputy foreign secretary) assured the House of Commons the ministry would examine rumors of Iranian officials trying to settle in the UK.
Iran's protests erupted in mid-September after the suspected police killing of a woman over herhijab headscarf, which is just one of the harsh rules the Islamic Republic has enforced since 1979.
Why, anyone may wonder, would Islamic officials now want to flee to Venezuela — a delectably "indecent" land of beaches, bikinis and booze?
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