| Submit your comments on this article |
| Syria-Lebanon-Iran |
| Mullahs' Airport Is Ideal Place for Exhibitions of Large Carpets |
| 2004-08-10 |
| From The Washington Post Exactly halfway between the vibrant metropolis of Tehran and the cloistered holy city of Qom, the new Imam Khomeini International Airport appears a fitting marker for the ambivalence the nation shows a world steadily knitting itself together beyond Iran's borders. .... The $475 million complex was concrete, steel and glass proof that Iran was opening to the world ... What's more, the airport was to be run by a company with roots both in Turkey and Austria, a foreign partnership that promised to invest almost $200 million in an additional terminal. But on opening day this May, what rolled onto the runways were tanks. The Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps seized control of the airport after the first flight landed. It remains shuttered today, one more manifestation of contradictions within a government still deciding how it feels about the world. .... The closure had implications for a bigger deal between Iran and a Turkish mobile phone company and made business affairs a central point of discussion when Turkey's prime minister paid a rare visit late in July. In three days of talks that centered on Iraq and ethnic Kurdish separatists, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan also delivered a bit of economic advice. ... Publicly, the Revolutionary Guard, charged with protecting Iran's borders but also increasingly active in politics, said it was intolerable for a foreign company to run the country's biggest airport. Some conservative politicians also alleged that the company, Tepe-Akfen-Vie (TAV), did business with Israel, Iran's archenemy, a charge denied by Israeli and Turkish officials. .... A pending solution to the airport standoff appears to accommodate the contending interests within the government: TAV would retain its 11-year concession but would outsource ground handling, presumably to an Iranian company, according to TAV's chief executive, Sani Sener. .... |
| Posted by:Mike Sylwester |
| #2 does make a nice refuelng point for IAF jets returning home, though |
| Posted by: Frank G 2004-08-10 22:06 |
| #1 There was a rumour recently that there was a teeny tiny nuclear accident here that actually caused the shutdown. |
| Posted by: Chuck Simmins 2004-08-10 21:58 |