Iran is one of the most heavily sanctioned countries on earth, and yet it manages to maintain a fleet of mostly Western-built aircraft flying. As Reuters once put it, Iran’s fleet is a vintage collection of jets held together with smuggled parts. North Korea and Cuba are also heavily sanctioned, but they operate legacy Soviet/Russian commercial aircraft(additionally, their commercial aviation industry is minimal while the countries are compact). Iran is much larger and is in need of a domestic airline industry ( as the world’s largest country, this is very important for Russia).