Between Paris and Tehran, the rag is burning. The French Ministry of Foreign Affairs announces this Thursday the arrestunfounded” of two French in Iran, demanding their “immediate releaseand promising toremain fully mobilized for this purpose“. The Quai d’Orsay adds that “the ambassador in Tehran has taken steps […] to obtain consular access […] and the charge d’affaires of the Iranian embassy in Paris was summoned to the ministry“. Iran had announced on Wednesday the arrest of two Europeans “entered the country with the aim of unleashing chaos and destabilizing society“. They are therefore French.
The identity of those arrested is not specified, but sources close to the case indicate that it would be an official of a teaching union and her companion. Iran is currently rocked by regular protests by teachers against their working conditions. Many of them were arrested, leading to further protests for their release. This context could be Tehran’s justification for arresting the two Frenchmen.
The Iranian authorities are holding several foreign nationals prisoner, for reasons deemed political by Western countries, which consider that Tehran is using them as a means of pressure in negotiations on the Iranian nuclear issue or to loosen the grip of international sanctions. This new crisis also occurs at the time of the visit to Iran of the negotiator of the European Union (EU) responsible for coordinating the talks on nuclear power, Enrique Mora.
Until the announcement of the arrest of the two Frenchmen, only one known foreign prisoner did not have an Iranian passport: this is the French thirty-year-old Benjamin Brière, arrested in May 2020 for having taken “photographs of prohibited areaswith a recreational drone in a natural park – which he denies. All other detainees have dual nationality. This was the case, for example, of the two Iranian-British Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori, released in March 2022 and returned to the United Kingdom. Another detainee, Iranian-Swedish academic Ahmadreza Djalali, was sentenced to death in 2020 and his execution could take place in the coming weeks, according to Iranian media. Tehran on Tuesday ruled out an exchange with a former Iranian prison official, tried for war crimes in Stockholm.
Franco-Iranian researcher Fariba Adelkhah has been detained since June 2019 and was sentenced in May 2020 to five years in prison for breaches of national security. She has been under house arrest since October 2020. Her companion Roland Marchal, also a researcher, had been imprisoned with her before being released in March 2020, after the release by Paris of the Iranian engineer Jallal Rohollahnejad, whose the United States demanded extradition for violating US sanctions against Iran.