Iran President Hassan Rouhani Invited to Paris in November: French Foreign

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.

France has sought to revive its relations with Iran, following this month’s historic nuclear deal.

Fabius said earlier that cars, agriculture and the environment would be a particular focus of a high-level French economic and business delegation due to visit Iran in September.

Iran and France agreed Wednesday to commence discourse on varied realms of potential cooperation, Iran’s Foreign Minister Mohammad-Javad Zarif said following a meeting with his visiting French counterpart. The goal of each visit was to discuss the terms of a nuclear deal signed on July 14 between Iran and six world powers. “It is true that in recent years, for reasons that everyone knows, the ties have cooled but now thanks to the nuclear deal, things will be able to change”, he said.

“We want to start a new chapter in a sense of common interest”, Zarif added, mentioning “the fight against terrorism” in a nod to possibly greater cooperation in fighting IS militants in Iraq and Syria.

The agreement reached in Vienna benefits both Iran and the P5+1(Britain, China, France, Russia, the United States, and Germany) group and serves as a major step in converting threats to opportunities, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani said at a meeting with Fabius.

“With sweeping sanctions relief, we have lessened our ability to challenge Iran’s conduct across the board”.

The UAE minister said Mogherini had not grasped the divisiveness of Iranian policy and suggested her praise of the Iranian officials with whom she negotiated the deal was misplaced.

The French foreign minister’s arrival was marked by controversy in the Iranian media, however, particularly among conservatives, who demanded that the minister apologise for France’s role in the sale of HIV-contaminated blood to Iran in the 1980s, when Fabius was prime minister.

Fabius encouraged greater cultural exchanges with France, including more Iranian students studying in France and more tourism between the two countries. Western nations have long suspected Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons alongside its civilian atomic program, allegations denied by Tehran, which insists its nuclear activities are entirely peaceful. He said the agreement also aims at preventing “nuclear proliferation among other regional countries so that no one even thinks about having a nuclear bomb.”