France will expel two Iranian diplomats after Tehran’s security services detained and interrogated two French Embassy staffers last month, Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot announced Tuesday evening.
The row dates back to July 19, when two French Embassy employees in Tehran — one of them the cultural attaché — were questioned for several hours and “beaten,” according to Barrot. Paris accused Iranian security services of carrying out a “premeditated and deliberate” act of intimidation in “flagrant violation” of diplomatic protections, summoning Iran’s chargé d’affaires two days later.
“It is precisely because France stands alongside the Iranian people” that the July 19 incident was especially outrageous, Barrot wrote on X Tuesday. The two French diplomats were “scandalously and deliberately assaulted,” he said, calling their treatment “intolerable.”