Press TV- Iran says it expects to finalize an agreement to purchase planes from France’s Airbus in the near future.  

Ali Abedzadeh, the managing director of Iran’s Civil Aviation Organization (CAO), was told by the domestic media that negotiations to finalize the agreement with the global aviation giant were in the last stages.

“Technical issues have become clear to a major extent,” Abedzadeh told Iran’s ISNA news agency. “Talks over legal issues continue and the agreement will be hopefully signed in the near future.”

Earlier, Javad Hashemi Tehrani, the managing director of Aviation Parts Holding Company of Iran, had said that Iran would receive the first Airbus plane by the end of 2016.

Tehran said the plane would be an A321. He added that it would be the first of 17 Airbus planes that the US Treasury Department has allowed to be sold to Iran.

The Iranian officials had earlier announced that the country would receive 9 planes from Airbus before the end of the current Persian calendar year (21 March 2017) in case the obstacles for delivering the planes are removed.

Airbus announced in September that it had received the US Treasury Department’s approval to sell aircraft to Iran. The company – together with its American rival Boeing – had earlier this year sealed deals with Iran to sell some 200 planes to Iran.

The fate of the deal with Boeing is still uncertain as US lawmakers last week voted to kill the company’s plan to sell planes to Iran.

Nevertheless, the outgoing US President Barack Obama has pledged to veto the bill on the grounds that it would breach a landmark nuclear agreement sealed with the country last year.