Dutch airline KLM and Air France have unexpectedly suspended weekend flights to Israel, the UAE, and Saudi Arabia, Channel 12 News reported on Friday evening.
According to the report, both airlines said the decision was due to escalated regional tensions.
The decisions come amid ongoing speculation that US President Donald Trump may order strikes on Iran due to the deadly crackdown on anti-regime protesters.
KLM resumed its flights to Israel as of the end of September. That announcement came as foreign airlines were gradually resuming their services to Israel following the end of the previous hostilities with Iran.
On Thursday, Trump again issued a stark warning to Iran, during an in‑flight briefing with reporters on his return from Davos to Washington, describing a significant US military buildup in the region.
“We have a lot of ships going in that direction, just in case. We have a big flotilla going in that direction. And we'll see what happens," Trump said. “We have a big force going toward Iran. I'd rather not see anything happen, but we're watching them very closely."
Trump again said that he prevented hundreds of executions in Iran last week. “I stopped 837 hangings [last] Thursday. They would have been dead. Every one of them would have been hung. This is like from a thousand years ago," he said.
“I said ‘if you hang those people, you're going to be hit harder than you've ever been hit. It'll make what we did to your Iran nuclear look like peanuts.’ And an hour before this horrible thing was going to take place, they canceled it. And they actually said they canceled it. They didn't postpone it. They canceled it. So that was a good sign."
Despite the success in halting the executions, Trump emphasized that US military preparations continue. “But we have an armada, we have a massive fleet heading in that direction. And maybe we won't have to use it. We'll see."
On Wednesday, Trump commented on the recent tensions with Iran in an interview with CNBC and said, “We hope there’s not going to be further action. They were shooting people indiscriminately on the streets and they were going to hang 837, mostly young people" after he threatened to hit them hard if they harmed protesters.
(Arutz Sheva-Israel National News' North American desk is keeping you updated until the start of Shabbat in New York. The time posted automatically on all Israel National News articles, however, is Israeli time.)