Due to this delay this advantage has been grabbed by neighboring countries such as Istanbul, Ankara, and Dubai airports. The Arab sheikhs and Turkish capitalists are making huge profits every day from passage of airliners through their airspace or their landings at their airports. Construction work on many of these airports started much later than that of the Imam Khomeini airport but finished sooner. Today, Dubai's huge foreign exchange incomes have attracted the attention of Iranian investors. The expert's argument was that the plane could land even at Tehran-Karaj highway.
Confidential reports indicate that the airport has put heavy financial burdens on the government.
With regards to the long delays in implementing the project, an assessment of expenses and profitability of the plan do not produce positive or reliable results. Because of lack of information or any report to the public and lack of transparency in the policies pursued by the officials concerned and with regards to the prolongation of the project and huge spending, economists have now serious doubts about the economic justification of the project. However, from the very beginning, the project ran into some difficulties and as a result proceeded very slowly due to some differences between the Iranian military and civilian aviation organizations. At that time, the great project was called a political project by experts. At that time 88 percent of the airport designing had been finished because following the Algiers Accord, American companies managed to get back its expenses for 88 percent of the airport designing from the Islamic Republic of Iran by lodging a complaint with the International Court of Justice at the Hague.