Paper Shows U.S.-Flagged Plane in Iran Has Ties to Ghana [View all]

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New details emerged on Friday about an American plane, owned by a small community bank in Utah and mysteriously parked this week at Tehran’s airport, showing that it had been leased by a Ghanaian mining company owned by a brother of Ghana’s president.

Buffeted by questions about why an American plane was in Tehran, Iran’s Foreign Ministry said on Friday that the plane had been used to transport top Ghanaian officials as part of a broader push to expand cooperation between the two countries.

The visit comes as Iran seeks to cultivate close relations with West African countries including Ghana, which also enjoys warm relations with the United States. In what seemed like an indirect reference to the chilly relationship between the United States and Iran, Marziyeh Afkham, the Foreign Ministry spokeswoman who announced the purpose of the visit in a statement, emphasized that the passengers and crew “were all non-American.”

Despite complex trade rules against doing business with Iran, a corporate jet with a small American flag turned up in Tehran.Iran Gets an Unlikely Visitor, an American Plane, but No One Seems to Know Why. Still, the American-flagged plane, a Bombardier jetliner powered by two General Electric engines, was an extraordinary sight in Iran and illustrated how aircraft operators can obscure themselves under United States rules that some American law enforcement officials find troubling. Iran has been so ostracized by the West over the years, particularly by the United States, that typically permission is required from officials in Washington for such a plane to fly there.

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http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/19/world/middleeast/paper-shows-us-flagged-plane-in-iran-has-ties-to-ghana.html?_r=0