Iran says to carry out French prisoner exchange in ‘next two months’

Iran will allow two French citizens held by Tehran for over three years to return home in “exchange” for France freeing an Iranian citizen “in the next two months,” Iran’s foreign minister said on Wednesday.

In an interview with TV channel France 24 after talks in Paris with his French counterpart Jean-Noel Barrot, Abbas Araghchi said “an exchange was negotiated between us and France.”

French citizens Cecile Kohler and Jacques Paris, who were arrested in May 2022, were freed from prison earlier this month but are still at Paris’s embassy in Tehran waiting for permission to leave Iran.

Iranian Mahdieh Esfandiari was meanwhile arrested in France in February on charges of promoting “terrorism” on social media, according to French authorities.

She is to go on trial in Paris from January 13 but was last month released on bail by the French judicial authorities and is now at the Iranian embassy in Paris.

“There has been an agreement and indeed, we are waiting for the entire legal and judicial process to take place in both countries,” Araghchi said.

“I hope, I think, that in the next two months… it will be completed and the exchange will take place,” the Iranian minister said.

France has neither confirmed nor denied the existence of such an exchange deal.

France has described Kohler and Paris as “state hostages” taken by Tehran in a bid to extract concessions. They were convicted on espionage charges their families have always condemned as fabricated.

Dozens of Europeans, north Americans and other Western citizens have been arrested in the last few years in similar circumstances.

Iran has previously carried out exchanges of Westerners for Iranians held by the West but insists foreigners are convicted fully in line with the law.

“The verdict has been issued (against Kohler and Paris), but based on Iranian law, prisoners can be exchanged in the interest of national security, and the exchange process is decided within the framework of Iran’s Supreme National Security Council,” said Araghchi.