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.
But profit motives are also a force. After 25 years in power, Iran's self-appointed rulers have grown adept at mingling self-interest with public interest. The children of ruling mullahs are among the biggest magnates in Iran.
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.
"Patience is something you need a lot of in Iran, but it's an emerging market," Sener said in an e-mailed reply to questions. "Things are moving slowly, but they're moving."
The same risks face Turkcell, the company that controls most of Turkey's mobile phone market. In Iran, whose population of 70 million is equal to Turkey's, the company saw one of the world's few underserved cell phone markets. Like TAV, its executives praise the professionals implementing Iran's Foreign Investment Protection and Promotion Act.
"We do not have a pause in our operations," Turkcell's chief executive, Muzaffer Akpinar, said in reply to written questions. But having been awarded the right to launch a cell phone network with local partners, Turkcell has yet to pay a license fee reported at $385 million. Iranian officials, who anticipate an investment in the billions, describe Turkcell's total stake as the biggest foreign investment since the 1979 Islamic Revolution.
"I think they're just nervous about what happened with TAV," said Faulks, the London analyst. "It's the largest, most significant, the most eye-catching, that's for sure. All the other countries will be watching what happens.
"There are many difficulties in investing in Iran, quite apart from the obvious political considerations," he said.
