The Iranian government decided prior to the 1979 Iranian Revolution to build a new airport for Tehran. The city was then the centre of the Middle East, and air traffic was increasing quickly at the existing Mehrabad Airport. The new airport was initially called Tehran or Aryamehr International Airport, and the original designers were the American company Tippetts-Abbett-McCarthy-Stratton and the Iranian firm Farman-Farmayan. In 1977, construction began 35 kilometres (22 mi) southwest of Tehran. The revolution and the Iran–Iraq War caused delays, and work on the runway recommenced in 1989. Due to the economic impact of the war and Iran's isolation in the international community, President Akbar Rafsanjani focused on other endeavours in the early 1990s. In 1995, the French firm Aéroports de Paris was selected as the primary consultant, and construction of the terminal, which Paul Andreu had redesigned, started. By 2000, the airport had been renamed after Ruhollah Khomeini, the founder of the Islamic Republic of Iran. In 2003, Tepe-Akfen-Vie (TAV), a Turkish-Austrian consortium, reached an agreement with the reformist administration of Mohammad Khatami to operate the terminal and construct a second one. It made an initial investment of US$15 million in the project. The deal symbolised a shift away from the viewpoint in the government that foreign investment was a form of imperialism. President Khatami inaugurated the airport on 1 February 2004 during celebrations marking the 25th anniversary of the revolution. The plan was for it to handle all international flights to Tehran. Officials wanted the airport to represent Iran's opening to the international community and hoped it would become the largest in the Middle East. The Economist Intelligence Unit commented that the Dubai airport already served as a hub in the region and that the new airport was unlikely to overcome existing barriers to tourism such as the government's rigid social rules. Some Iranians including the directors of two airlines objected to the deal with TAV. Their primary concern was that Turkey had links to Iran's foe Israel. On 7 May 2004, the military forced TAV's staff to leave the premises with their equipment and granted management of the facility to Iran Air. The following day, an Emirates flight from Dubai became the first to land. Hours later, however, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps closed the airport by driving tanks onto the runway. It threatened to use anti-aircraft fire against the second incoming flight, which fighter jets escorted to Isfahan. The rest of the flights were diverted to Mehrabad. The guards said it was unsafe and an affront to national dignity for foreigners to be in charge of the largest airport in Iran. Conservatives in parliament stated that the consortium had done business with Israel. TAV responded that it had no association with the country. Later that year, the conservative-dominated parliament impeached Khatami's minister of transportation, Ahmad Khorram, partly because of the TAV contract. It also granted itself the right to veto the deal and another one that the government had signed with a Turkish firm. The agreement with TAV was ultimately annulled. The incident soured relations between Iran and Turkey. According to Ray Takeyh, a fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, the likely reason for the closure was that "the local interest, particularly Revolutionary Guards, desired a greater share of the profits". The Guardian and The Washington Post made similar comments. The latter also described the airport as a symbol of the divide between those Iranians who wanted to engage more with the world and those who did not. On 30 April 2005, the $350 million Imam Khomeini Airport reopened under the management of a consortium of four Iranian airlines—Caspian Airlines, Iran Aseman Airlines, Kish Air and Mahan Air. No ceremony was held to mark the occasion due to persistent tensions.