PARIS—France declared two agents of Iran’s embassy in Paris persona non grata on Aug. 18, retaliating for what it called an “extremely serious assault” by Iranian security services on two of its diplomats in Tehran.
Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced the measure on X one day after Tehran barred the two French diplomats from returning to Iran.
“I had announced that this intolerable act would have consequences. And so it has. Two Iranian diplomats in France will be expelled in the very near future,” Barrot wrote.
Iran’s ambassador was summoned to the Quai d’Orsay, seat of the French Foreign Ministry, and notified of the decision, taken under Article 9 of the 1961 Vienna Convention.
Rather than shedding light on a “premeditated and deliberate” assault, the ministry said in a statement, Iranian authorities “chose to level completely false accusations against [French] agents and to fabricate a case of interference out of whole cloth.”
A Raid on a Cultural Meeting
The crisis began on July 19, when Iranian security agents burst into a Tehran work meeting on Villa Zadig, an artists’ residency program run by the French Embassy. Present were two members of its cultural service, including the cultural attaché, and two prominent Iranian graphic designers.
According to Paris, the French pair were held and interrogated for hours, one of them beaten. Both have since returned to France. The Iranian designers, Aria Kasaei, 46, and Elly Naghilou, 36, were arrested on the spot and remain in detention, relatives told AFP.
Tehran denies any mistreatment, saying the pair were only “briefly questioned” after “a meeting with several individuals wanted by the authorities.”
On Aug. 15, Iran’s intelligence ministry accused France of “planning and designing a vast scheme aimed at exerting influence and engaging in foreign interference.”
Announcing the ban two days later, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei argued that “claiming that these individuals were engaged in activities to support civil society is in itself an acknowledgment that the Vienna Convention was violated.”
Barrot retorted, “It is precisely because France stands shoulder to shoulder with the Iranian people, supporting their artists, scientists, and researchers, that two French diplomats were scandalously and deliberately attacked on July 19.”
The Iranian regime has detained and imprisoned multiple French nationals on espionage and related charges. The French government, the individuals involved, and their families have consistently described the accusations as arbitrary and fabricated, part of what Paris has denounced as a “policy of state hostage-taking.”
French Iranians Call For Tough Action
Mahnaz Shirali, a French Iranian author and political sociologist, told The Epoch Times that Paris could not remain silent.
“France had no choice but to react,” she said. “It remains to be seen who will be expelled. If they are merely two subordinate agents of the Iranian regime, the French response would carry only limited weight.”
“It would be worth examining the case of Iran’s ambassador to France,” she said.
Emmanuel Razavi, a senior French Iranian investigative journalist, told The Epoch Times that the decision was “a step in the right direction and sent a clear message that France would not tolerate attacks on its personnel.”
He noted that the move comes against the broader backdrop of a joint statement signed in June 2026 by the United States, France, and other Western countries, which condemned attacks by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) against Iranian dissidents, journalists, and Jewish communities in the United States and Europe.
The European Union, with French backing, added the IRGC to its terrorism list on Feb. 19.
Mona Jafarian, a French Iranian activist, essayist, and cofounder of the group Femme Azadi, told The Epoch Times that “the Quai d’Orsay always reacts after the Islamic Republic has committed an offense, and not the other way around.”
“Two French diplomats were assaulted, yet it took weeks, and the Islamic Republic declaring them persona non grata, for the French Foreign Ministry to finally take action,” she said.
Since the start of the U.S. operation against Iran, French President Emmanuel Macron’s government has maintained a policy of nonparticipation, repeatedly calling for diplomacy and peace.
Jafarian compared Macron’s policy toward Iran to that of former U.S. President Joe Biden, arguing that the French government has not been sufficiently tough and shies away from openly confronting Islamism, “allowing Iranian, Qatari, Algerian, and Turkish propaganda to operate unchecked” on French territory.
She contrasted Macron’s approaches with that of U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, “who expels the regime’s agents and dismantles their propaganda networks in the United States.”
Shirali, who takes aim at the French left, stated “that many French journalists defend the regime, partly because they harbor a deep hostility toward Israel.”
Jafarian called for “a coalition to help America weaken this regime as much as possible” and for engagement with the Iranian opposition.
She said that “the French state has incurred a debt to the Iranian people.”
“France hosted Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who settled in Neauphle-le-Château, near Paris, from where he prepared the Islamic Revolution before returning to Iran on an Air France flight in 1979,” she said.
“The ties between France and Iran are long-standing and deep. Before the 1979 revolution, French culture permeated Iran, and Iranians learned French at school,” she said.
“Iranians are not asking for 100,000 soldiers to be sent. They are asking only for the logistical and political support that would allow them to liberate their country themselves.”
