PARIS: French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault will travel to Tehran next week to reaffirm Europe’s commitment to Iran’s landmark nuclear agreement, which US President Donald Trump has threatened to scrap.
According to the French Foreign Ministry, Ayrault will arrive in the Iranian capital on Monday to participate in a session of Iran-France joint economic commission, which is slated to be held with the participation of the two countries’ officials. Some 50 French firms are said to participate in the forum on Tuesday.
The deal struck in 2015 with three European countries, Russia, China and the United States gave Iran relief from a range of sanctions, allowing it to strike major business deals with Europe for the first time in years.
During Iranian President Hassan Rouhani’s historic visit to Paris in January last year, Iran and France signed a series of basic trade deals worth billions of dollars. France’s conglomerate plane maker Airbus, the multinational integrated oil and gas company Total, and automobile manufacturers Peugeot and Renault have already signed deals with Tehran.
However, on his campaign trail, Trump threatened to annul the deal, which he has lambasted as “the worst accord ever negotiated” and “one of the dumbest” ones he has come across.
France’s relationship with Shi’ite Muslim Iran is complicated by its political and commercial ties with Sunni Gulf Arab states, especially Saudi Arabia, Tehran’s main regional rival.
Ayrault was in Riyadh on Jan. 24 partly to discuss the trip to Tehran with an eye on Iran’s role in the region, especially in Syria where Paris and Riyadh back opponents to Iranian ally President Bashar al-Assad.
“We don’t agree on Syria and will remind them that France and the European Union are directly concerned by the Syria crisis and among the first to suffer its consequences. So we must have a role in helping find a solution”.
