New Deal

Boeing has a government-approved deal to sell Iran Air some replacement parts to sustain its aging fleet of commercial airliners. Also: Seahawks hand out blingy Super Bowl rings to all staffers; Trupanion’s stock offering got an experimental assist from a social IPO website.
There will be no Iranian pilots picking up planes at Boeing’s Everett delivery center any time soon.
But the company has reached an agreement to sell the Islamic Republic’s main airline unspecified replacement parts and other items for sustaining Iran’s aging fleet of commercial airliners, according to a regulatory filing this past week.
Joel Johnson, an international-affairs analyst at The Teal Group, says Iran Air “has seven or eight ancient 747s that have been quietly maintained with needed parts by a European carrier over the years, with implicit approval of the U.S.”
In April, both Boeing and engine-maker General Electric said they’d received licenses for transactions to bolster the safety of that fleet from the Treasury Department’s Office of Foreign Asset Control (OFAC), which oversees the global net of economic sanctions that the U.S. and other countries have lowered over Iran. The U.S. temporarily exempted civilian air safety from its economic sanctions late last year amid optimism Iran and the so-called P5+1 group of nations could agree on limits to Iran’s nuclear programs. The new filing says Boeing between April and June 30 “entered into an agreement and engaged in related discussions with Iran Air ... (for) the potential sale of certain goods and services related to the safety of flight, including airplane parts, manuals, drawings, service bulletins, and navigation charts and data.”
However, Boeing “generated no gross revenues or net profits” in the second quarter from its Iran dealings, says the filing.
GE disclosed in April it had agreed to service 18 engines from Iran Air’s planes at facilities in Germany.
It’s a touchy subject, sensitive enough that neither Boeing nor the Treasury’s sanctions office would discuss details.
Boeing’s Washington, D.C., office says only that the company’s license, due to expire July 20, was extended by four months. The nuclear talks, originally scheduled to conclude in July, were similarly extended.