TEHRAN, 2 May 2005 — Hard-line Iranian politicians called on the government yesterday to sever all diplomatic ties with Britain in a rapidly escalating row over the opening of a new airport serving Tehran. Britain and Canada issued warnings on Friday to travelers to avoid using the Imam Khomeini International Airport, which opened on Saturday, due to concerns the runway may be unsafe.
Iranian transport officials rejected the travel advisories and said the airport and runway had been inspected and approved by the International Civil Aviation Organization. Hard-line politicians ignored the dispute over safety and focused their ire on an alleged request by London that the name of the airport, dedicated to the founding father of the 1979 revolution Ayatollah Khomeini, be changed. “If Britain does not apologize to Iran we will break all ties with that country and expel Britain’s ambassador,” said Hamid Reza Hajibabaei, a member of Parliament’s presiding board.
“If true, we should ... not allow any British nationals to enter our country and we should naturally cut economic ties with that country,” agreed Hossein Shariatmadari, editor in chief of the hard-line Kayhan newspaper.
The British Embassy in Tehran rejected the accusation as “nonsense”. “We have never requested that the name of the airport be changed,” said Charge d’Affaires Matthew Gould. “Our only consideration is for the safety of the runway.”
He said Britain had received reports about the existence of ancient irrigation channels, known as qanats, beneath the runway which could impair its strength and was urgently seeking reassurances from the ICAO and the Iranian government that corrective measures would be taken. The first flights to and from the airport, located 48 km south of Tehran, began on Saturday with routes serving the nearby Gulf city of Dubai.
Additional routes are due to be transferred there from Tehran’s Mehrabad International Airport in the coming months. Dubai-based Emirates airline said on Saturday it was satisfied the airport was safe.
Meanwhile, supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said yesterday in comments apparently directed at the United States that the Islamic republic’s nuclear program was “none of your business”. In a speech carried on state television, the all-powerful Khamenei also said that the June presidential election would not bring any change to Iran’s determination to press on with its controversial atomic activities.
“The shameless arrogance and rudeness has gone so far that it has given rise to such comments that Iran does not need nuclear technology. This is none of your business,” he told a gathering in the southern city of Kerman. “You do not have the right to judge if a nation needs nuclear energy or not,” he said. His comments came the day after Iran said it was unhappy with the progress of nuclear negotiations with Britain, France and Germany, and warned it may resume uranium conversion activities next week in defiance of a key agreement.
Uranium conversion — or turning raw uranium into a gas to be fed into centrifuges for the enrichment process — is covered by a freeze agreed to by Iran in November 2004 as a confidence-building measure.
That deal that kick-started a series of talks with the so-called EU3 that are aimed at easing international fears the Islamic republic is seeking an enrichment capacity so it could also produce an atomic bomb.
