Iran’s armed forces closed Tehran’s new international airport on its first day of scheduled flights on Saturday. Security fears were cited in a statement carried on the official IRNA news agency, but that may refer to a dispute involving the foreign consortium that built and was to have run the Imam Khomeini airport, 30 miles south of Tehran. State airline Iran Air took over the new airport’s operation from a Turkish-Austrian consortium Tepe-Akfen-Vie (TAV) on Friday. "Unfortunately officials at the airport ignored the security measures... on not deploying foreign groups at this vital center in the country," the joint-armed forces statement said, although Iran Air is now in charge at the airport.
The airport has proved controversial with the conservative press rallying behind domestic airlines that said TAV had not prepared it to international standards. Before the airport was to open, two local airlines said they would refuse to transfer their flights in protest at a government decision to hand over operation of the airport’s only existing terminal to the TAV consortium. "We are not flying from an airport run by dagnabbed foreigners," Ali Abedzadeh, director of state-owned Aseman Airline, was quoted as saying by Economic Hayat-e No daily on Wednesday.
The joint-armed forces said in the statement they allowed only one of six planned flights from Dubai to land before shutting the airport. "The airport was closed until further notice," the statement said. The flights were diverted to the old Mehrabad airport in central Tehran, a Mehrabad spokeswoman said. The head of Iran’s Aviation Organization told the ISNA students news agency he opposed the closure. "The security forces have no right to close the airport and it is illegal in terms of both domestic and international laws," said Hassan Hajalifard, adding one of the flights had been diverted to the central city of Isfahan. Iran has said it intends to move all international flights to the $475 million airport by the end of July 2004. The new airport was inaugurated 30 years after the project was conceived.
| That's nothing compared to what the "Stop O'Hare Expansion" group has done. |
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