The United States Treasury has placed fresh sanctions on networks supporting Iran’s Mahan Air and among the six individuals and companies designated is a firm registered in Kashmir. Skiez Travels and Logistics Private Limited which lists addresses in Srinagar and New Delhi, has been named as a general sales agent for the Iranian carrier. The action announced on 30 July also targets entities in China and Russia. It is the first time a company based in Indian-administered Kashmir has appeared in a US sanctions package focused on Iranian military aviation logistics.
Mahan Air has been under American and European sanctions for years. Washington describes the airline as a conduit for the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, used to move personnel, weapons, unmanned aerial vehicles and military equipment. Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said those providing financial, logistical or commercial support to the IRGC or Mahan Air are 'helping sustain a terrorist enterprise'. The latest designations aim to cut the carrier’s commercial representation in key markets.
Skiez Travels was incorporated in November 2020. According to its own website it has represented Mahan Air as general sales agent in India since that year. The Office of Foreign Assets Control listing places the company in Srinagar, Jammu and Kashmir, as well as in Defence Colony, New Delhi. Parallel designations cover Chinese general sales agents Shanghai Wings International Logistics and Shanghai Elite International Travel, a Russian firm called Air Cargo Pro Limited and an Iranian entity linked to military targeting. The Indian company is therefore part of a wider effort to sever Mahan Air’s commercial reach across three continents at once.
The inclusion of a Kashmir-based entity is unusual. US aviation sanctions rarely name companies operating from Indian territory, let alone from the sensitive region of Jammu and Kashmir. The designation does not accuse the Indian government of involvement. It targets a private firm alleged to have provided commercial services to a sanctioned Iranian airline. Yet the geography alone raises questions that New Delhi cannot easily ignore. India maintains careful relations with both Washington and Tehran. It has historically balanced energy ties, Chabahar port cooperation and strategic autonomy against closer security and technology partnerships with the United States. An American sanctions list that reaches into Indian territory tests that balancing act more sharply than most previous measures.
For Indian policymakers, the episode creates an immediate practical problem and a longer political one. Practically, any company now on the SDN list faces severe restrictions on access to the US financial system and to firms that fear secondary sanctions. Politically, the appearance of a Srinagar address on a list aimed at an IRGC-linked airline invites scrutiny of how thoroughly Indian authorities monitor commercial relationships that touch sanctioned entities. It also hands critics, both domestic and external, a new talking point about the porosity of controls in a region already under intense international attention.
The sanctions themselves are consistent with a long American campaign against Mahan Air. What is new is the geography of one of the designated companies. Whether Skiez Travels knowingly facilitated prohibited activities, or simply provided ordinary sales-agent services that crossed an invisible sanctions line, will be argued in the weeks ahead. What cannot be argued away is the fact that a company operating from Kashmir is now publicly named in a US effort to isolate Iranian military aviation logistics. That fact alone turns a routine sanctions announcement into a test of India’s claimed neutrality in the long contest between Washington and Tehran.