Iran’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday denied reports that Tehran had closed a border crossing with northern Iraq in response to an independence referendum in Iraq’s Kurdish region last month, the Iranian Students’ News Agency (ISNA) reported.

“As we announced earlier, we blocked our airspace to the Kurdish region on a request from the central government of Iraq, and as far as I know, nothing new has happened in this area,” ISNA quoted Foreign Ministry spokesman Bahram Qassemi as saying.