{"id":32640,"date":"2026-03-15T20:43:14","date_gmt":"2026-03-15T20:43:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/32640\/"},"modified":"2026-03-15T20:43:14","modified_gmt":"2026-03-15T20:43:14","slug":"switzerland-refuses-two-us-requests-for-flyovers-linked-to-iran-war-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/32640\/","title":{"rendered":"Switzerland refuses two US requests for flyovers linked to Iran war"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>    <img src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/809011ac804b2b6904594c786de9614325be5c6f-91099478.jpg\" width=\"1400\" height=\"1050\" alt=\"Federal Council authorises US overflights in connection with war in Iran\" loading=\"eager\" decoding=\"sync\" fetchpriority=\"high\"\/><\/p>\n<p>                The law on neutrality prohibits Switzerland from allowing parties involved in a conflict to fly over its territory for military purposes connected to that conflict.             <\/p>\n<p>            Keystone-SDA        <\/p>\n<p>        The Federal Council approved three flyover requests from the United States in connection with the war being led by Israel and the US against Iran. Two other requests were rejected.\n<\/p>\n<p>            Listen to the article        <\/p>\n<p>            Listening the article        <\/p>\n<p>                Toggle language selector            <\/p>\n<p>                            English (US)                        <\/p>\n<p>                            English (British)                        <\/p>\n<p>            Generated with artificial intelligence.        <\/p>\n<p>        This content was published on    <\/p>\n<p>        March 15, 2026 &#8211; 10:41\n<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.swissinfo.ch\/eng\/latest-news\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">+Get the most important news from Switzerland in your inbox<\/a><\/p>\n<p>Three requests in the context of the war in Iran were approved: one maintenance flight and two for transport aircraft. The government, however, rejected two additional requests, it revealed in a statement on Saturday evening.<\/p>\n<p>The law on neutrality prohibits Switzerland from allowing parties involved in a conflict to fly over its territory for military purposes connected to that conflict. Humanitarian and medical transits, including the transport of the wounded, and flights unrelated to the conflict are permitted, the government explained.<\/p>\n<p>Future requests that are \u201cclearly not related to the conflict\u201d can be authorised. However, applications for flyovers should be rejected \u201cif they exceed normal averages and it cannot be determined what the purpose of these flights is\u201d, the government said. <\/p>\n<p>\n    More<\/p>\n<p>    <img src=\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/1773569358_188_ebdbc7c08c48d591e5daf8e4fb487840-image_20230914phd9278-data.jpg\" width=\"1024\" height=\"768\" alt=\"An aeroplane in the air\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" fetchpriority=\"auto\"\/><\/p>\n<p>        More    <\/p>\n<p>        Neutrality\n        <\/p>\n<p>        Swiss neutrality: government faces difficult decision over Mideast conflict    <\/p>\n<p class=\"teaser-wide-card__excerpt\">\n<p>                        This content was published on                    <\/p>\n<p>                        Mar 4, 2026                    <\/p>\n<p>                If the conflict involving Iran drags on, Switzerland may have to apply its law of neutrality. This could restrict military overflights and arms exports to the United States.            <\/p>\n<p>    <a class=\"teaser-wide-card__link\" href=\"https:\/\/www.swissinfo.ch\/eng\/neutrality\/when-does-neutrality-law-apply-swiss-government-faces-difficult-decision-over-middle-east-conflict\/91034246\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\"><\/p>\n<p>            Read more: Swiss neutrality: government faces difficult decision over Mideast conflict<br \/>\n    <\/a><\/p>\n<p>The US continues to have an annual authorisation \u201cfor clearly designated state aircraft\u201d. However, this authorisation excludes \u201cin particular state flights that would constitute military support in the war between the US, Israel and Iran\u201d. According to the Federal Council, aircraft outside of this list require individual licences from the Federal Office of Civil Aviation (FOCA).<\/p>\n<p>Since February 28, 2026, there have been serious hostilities in the Middle East, the Federal Council said. War is raging between the US and Israel on one side and Iran on the other. The law on neutrality applies in relation to these states.<\/p>\n<p>In this context, Switzerland has received several requests for US military and state aircraft to enter its airspace. The FOCA examines such requests, known as diplomatic clearances, on the basis of the Ordinance on the Preservation of Air Sovereignty in consultation with the foreign, defence and economics ministries. The Federal Council takes decisions on requests related to cases of considerable political significance while maintaining neutrality in the balance.<\/p>\n<p>Translated from German with AI\/gw<\/p>\n<p>                How we work            <\/p>\n<p>We select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools to translate them into English. A journalist then reviews the translation for clarity and accuracy before publication.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles. The news stories we select have been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team from news agencies such as Bloomberg or Keystone.<\/p>\n<p>If you have any questions about how we work, write to us at\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.swissinfo.ch\/eng\/swiss-position\/federal-council-authorises-us-overflights-in-connection-with-war-in-iran\/mailto:english@swissinfo.ch\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">english@swissinfo.ch<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>        Articles in this story    <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The law on neutrality prohibits Switzerland from allowing parties involved in a conflict to fly over its territory&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":32393,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[101,11844,12148,5608,3368,2143,100,1292,69,103,17],"class_list":{"0":"post-32640","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-switzerland","8":"tag-article","9":"tag-beat-neutrality","10":"tag-beat-swiss-position","11":"tag-beat-war-peace","12":"tag-conflict","13":"tag-foreign-affairs","14":"tag-latest-news","15":"tag-law-and-order","16":"tag-politics","17":"tag-production-type-deepl-autotranslation","18":"tag-switzerland"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@ch\/116235141308333557","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32640"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32640\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/32393"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ch\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}