Fabius says time to warm up Iran-France relations

He extended an invitation from French President François Hollande to his Iranian counterpart Hassan Rouhani to visit Paris in November.

The French employers’ federation, MEDEF, is due to visit Iran in September to try to kickstart ties.

French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has arrived in the Iranian capital, Tehran, to hold talks with the country’s high-ranking officials.

The offer came in a letter delivered to Rouhani by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who is in Tehran on a short trip aimed at kickstarting ties between the countries after years of strain.

During her meeting with Rouhani, Mogherini expressed the hope that the implementation of the nuclear deal would open a new chapter in the economic, trade and political relations between Iran and the EU, and would help expand Iran’s relations with European countries.

Fabius said the nuclear deal, agreed on July 14 between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council – Britain, China, France, Russian Federation and the US – plus Germany, made such a change possible.

His visit to Iran, which comes at the invitation of his Iranian opposite number, has raised criticisms in Iran, especially over France’s hard line towards Iran in the course of negotiations over Tehran’s nuclear program which resulted in an agreement in the Austrian city of Vienna earlier this month. The French diplomat was widely seen as playing the role of bad cop, and was even accused by Iranian hard-liners of being a “Zionist lackey” who at one point reportedly threatened to derail the emerging accord. France used to have a strong presence in Iran before the sanctions went into effect, with Peugeot and Renault being major players in the Iranian auto industry and energy giant Total heavily involved in the oil sector. The last Iranian president to make a state visit to France was in 1999, when Jacques Chirac was the French president.Fabius reiterated that Hollande extends a friendly hand to Iran.

But the Iranian hard-liners cited a scandal from the 1980s as another reason for opposing the French foreign minister’s visit.