Lisbon prosecutors open a file on US flights through Lajes

Portuguese prosecutors said on Saturday they had opened an inquiry into whether the government's authorisation of US flights through Lajes Air Base, on Terceira in the Azores, during the Iran war was lawful. The file was opened on a complaint from the Left Bloc.

The Prosecutor General's Office said the probe followed a complaint by members of that party, and gave no further detail. The Foreign Ministry declined to comment. The Left Bloc had asked prosecutors in April to investigate, calling the use of the base a gross violation of international law. Foreign minister Paulo Rangel has said Portugal was not a party to the conflict, and that the flights were authorised only after Washington gave assurances that any operation would be defensive, necessary and proportionate, and limited to military targets.

The legal hinge is the bilateral agreement on the base. In peacetime the United States can use Lajes without a fresh Portuguese authorisation. Once hostilities have begun, Portugal must approve the use. Prosecutors are now asking whether the approvals given after the Iran war started met that clause, and whether they met international law as the Left Bloc claims. Opening a file is not a charge. It moves the argument from parliament into a case that can demand documents.

What Lajes is for

Lajes sits on Terceira, roughly a third of the way across the Atlantic from the US east coast to Europe, and on the air route from North America toward the Mediterranean. For decades it has been a staging field for US transports and tankers. Portugal, unlike Spain, authorised several US transit flights through the base during the Iran conflict. That choice is what the left parties attacked, and what Rangel defended as lawful support for a defensive operation.

The war itself began in late February, with US and Israeli strikes on Iran and Iranian strikes on Israel and on Gulf states that host US forces. By April, when the Left Bloc filed, the political fight in Lisbon was already about sorties that had used Portuguese concrete. Saturday's confirmation means the April complaint was not filed and forgotten. It has a prosecutor. RTP, citing Lusa, reported the confirmation on Friday. The Saturday wire story is the English-language record of the same step.

What the inquiry can and cannot do

A Portuguese criminal inquiry into an authorisation given by a sitting government is aimed at the decision, not at the American crews. The likely documents are the written approvals, the US assurances Rangel cited, and the record of which aircraft types transited. If those papers show a blanket approval rather than a case-by-case one, the Left Bloc's argument gets a fact. If they show limits matching the formula Rangel used, his defence gets one. Neither outcome is in the Saturday statement.

The inquiry also does not ground aircraft. Lajes remains a US staging field under the standing agreement. A prosecutor's file does not revoke a foreign minister's clearance. It does mean that the next request, if one comes while Hormuz is still shut and the war is still open, will be written with this file in the room. Spain refused comparable transits. Portugal did not. That contrast is the political fact the inquiry now has to turn into a legal one.

The political use of the file

The Left Bloc is not in the centre-right government that gave the approvals. A prosecutorial inquiry gives it a forum it does not have in cabinet. Rangel's position is already public: no Portuguese participation, assurances taken, law complied with. The ministry's refusal to comment on Saturday leaves that position where it was in April. The new fact is procedural. The complaint is now a case, and the case has no published timetable. Until a prosecutor asks for the flight logs, the public knows the file exists and does not know which tail numbers are in it.