Trade with Iran on menu as Rouhani to be feted in France

France will receive Iranian president Hassan Rouhani on Wednesday and Thursday with all the pomp and ceremony of an official visit, including military honours at Les Invalides.

Prof Bernard Hourcade, a leading French expert on Iran, says that "things have changed fundamentally" since the agreement between Tehran and the major world powers on its nuclear programme last July.

Under the deal, Iran agreed to restrictions on its nuclear activities in exchange for a lifting of the economic sanctions against it.

“France is receiving Rouhani with all the respect due a powerful country that is coming onto the international scene,” said Hourcade. “Iran was an outcast. This is the beginning of normalisation.”

Rouhani will meet with the director general of Unesco on Wednesday and will co-chair a "France- Iran economic gathering" at the business confederation Medef in the presence of prime minister Manuel Valls. He will also deliver a lecture at the international relations think-tank Ifri, and conclude his stay with a two-hour meeting with president François Hollande.

Iran is flush with some $100 billion in unfrozen assets since the international sanctions were lifted on January 16th, when the nuclear accord entered the “implementation” stage.

Under that agreement, the Islamic Republic agreed to store 12,000 centrifuges, part with almost all of its enriched uranium, and dismantle its heavy-water reactor.

Golden pages

Rouhani hailed the lifting of the sanctions as “one of the golden pages” of his country’s history. In the run-up to parliamentary elections on February 26th, he is emphasising the economic benefits of the nuclear accord, which was opposed by hardliners.

The Iranian leader spent two days in Italy, a major trading partner, on his way to Paris. Iran signed some €17 billion in contracts there, including a €5 billion pipeline and €5.7 billion for steel plants.

Iran's transport minister, Abbas Akhoundi, announced that Iran would purchase 114 Airbus aircraft in France.  Rouhani said substantial contracts were also likely with Peugeot and Renault. Businesses are salivating over the prospect of a market of 80 million people, virtually untouched for the past decade.

However, the overtly business orientation of the trip is misleading, says Hourcade. China’s president Xi Jinping visited Tehran on January 22nd, and German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier is about to make his second visit.

“Everybody in the world is going to benefit from contracts,” Hourcade said. “We’re making a big fuss over the Airbuses, but Boeing will sell just as many. There’s an equilibrium.”

Far more important are the political implications of the trip. Iran and Saudi Arabia, the two main powers in the Middle East, are fighting a proxy war in Syria that has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives and created millions of refugees.

Rouhani discussed the war during a 40-minute visit with Pope Francis in Rome yesterday, and it is certain to be raised with Hollande. The pope said he "hopes for peace," and Rouhani requested his prayers.

Hourcade says France, as a longtime ally of Saudi Arabia and a newfound friend of Iran, can mediate.“France has huge interests in the region, and a history of influence in Syria. We have to find a way to stop this war . . . Rouhani’s visit should make it possible to begin a process of stabilising the Middle East.”

The visit ends 37 years of tension between France and Iran. Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, the leader of the 1979 revolution, had lived in exile in the town of Neauphle-le-Château, outside Paris.  After studying theology in Qom and law in England, Rouhani stayed for a time with the ayatollah in France.

Received exiles

However, France subsequently received the exiled opposition to the revolution. The shah’s last prime minister,

Shapour Baktiar

, was assassinated near Paris. Lebanese Shia Muslims backed by Iran blew up the French base in Beirut in 1983, as well as US marine headquarters. Paris infuriated Tehran by arming Saddam Hussein during the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War.

More recently, France angered Tehran by being the most hawkish negotiator in nuclear negotiations. And Iran has watched France’s ever closer relationship with Saudi Arabia with a wary eye.

Yet French foreign minister Laurent Fabius counts the nuclear accord as one of two French diplomatic achievements in 2015, along with the Paris climate accord. "I pushed for the [nuclear] agreement to take place on July 14th," he boasted earlier this month.

The last Iranian leader to visit Paris was president Mohammad Khatami, in 1999. Khatami enthralled western interlocutors with his plea for a “dialogue of civilisations” but was blocked by hardliners at home.

Rouhani is perceived to be much more pragmatic, more a man of "the system". He has managed to enlist the support of the most powerful man in Iran, the Guide of the Revolution, Ali Khamenei.

“There’s no point dreaming of an Iran that doesn’t exist,” Hourcade says. “Rouhani deals with the radicals, the guardians of the revolution, the broken-down economy, the mafia and the drug problems. He’s a realist who deals with what’s there.”