After coming under scrutiny for de facto facilitating weapons shipments from Iran to the Bashar al-Assad regime, Iraqi officials have declared their readiness to carry out random searches of airplanes:

While Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki’s spokesman spoke of newly tightened restrictions on Iranian flights to Syria, the head of Iraq’s civil aviation authority acknowledged that no planes had been searched since October. “Because of a lot of information which referred to transportation of weapons, we have increased the activity of inspections,” Maliki’s spokesman Ali Mussawi told AFP. “We will carry out more random searches, to be assured that there is no weapons transfer.”

Last week Syrian rebels announced that they had targeted an Iranian arms shipment as it was attempting to land at the international airport in Damascus. At the same time, Secretary of State John Kerry, during a visit to the area, issued sharp words to Baghdad regarding “overflights from Iran” that  “are in fact helping to sustain… al-Assad and his regime.” Kerry emphasized that the dynamic was “problematic.”

Though Iraq serves as Iran’s key conduit for weapons transfers to Assad, Tehran has developed alternative routes. A Western official told Reuters earlier this month that Iranian weapons continue to pour into Syria from Turkey and Lebanon as well. Analysts fear that the recently announced resumption of commercial air traffic between Egypt and Iran will open up an additional route. Saturday’s flight, which marked the first direct one between the two countries in decades, reportedly included Iranian diplomats.

Iran has long used Egypt as a route to smuggle weapons to its proxies.

[Photo: U.S. Air Force photo / Staff Sgt. Jessica J. Wilkes / Wiki Commons]