Hassan Rouhani’s historic visit to France, which began on Wednesday afternoon, is set to be dominated by business talks between the Iranian president’s 100-strong trade delegation and French CEOs, most notably over a multibillion-dollar contract for the purchase of 114 Airbus planes.
But on a personal level for Rouhani the visit will stir memories from more than three and a half decades ago when his political career began in earnest in exile in a suburban area west of Paris.
In 1978 the law graduate and outspoken critic of the shah joined Ayatollah Rouhollah Khomeini in Neauphle-le-Château, from where Khomeini stirred up a revolution 3,000 miles away thanks to a network of devout supporters who used cassette tapes and photocopiers to spread his message.
Rouhani returned to Tehran in 1979, entered parliament after the revolution and very soon became an ultimate insider, serving in critical roles at the time of war with Iraq.
Now 67, Rouhani returns to France as a moderate and reform-seeking president who wants to rebuild economic ties following the lifting of sanctions, and to revamp Iran’s image in Europe after the acrimonious years of his predecessor, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It is the first state visit to France by an Iranian president in 17 years.
Rouhani arrives from Italy, where he paid a state visit to Rome and the Vatican, meeting Pope Francis. “Iran is the safest, the most stable country in the entire region,” Rouhani said in Rome. “Everyone understood that the nuclear negotiations represented a win-win situation for both sides. There has to be an advantage for both sides: we invite you to invest and we will provide stability and ensure that you can make adequate returns.”
In Paris, the Iranian president will meet French business leaders and host a dinner reception with expatriate Iranians. It was not clear whether his tight schedule would allow him to also visit Neauphle-le-Château.
On Thursday the president will be welcomed by the French foreign minister, Laurent Fabius, at Les Invalides. He will then lead a business meeting at Medef, France’s main business confederation, in the presence of the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, and will speak at Ifri, the French institute of international relations, which has a strong presence in Tehran. Rouhani is due to meet the French president, François Hollande, at the Elysée Palace in the afternoon.
Unlike other state visits to France, there will be no lunch reception at the Elysée because of Iran’s insistence on a longstanding diplomatic protocol that its officials should not participate in events where wine is served. In Rome, Italian officials sought to be culturally sensitive by covering up nude statues at the city’s Capitoline Museum, where Rouhani met Matteo Renzi, the Italian prime minister. Iran has said it did not request the cover-up.
Business talks will dominate the visit. Europe was Iran’s largest trading partner before sanctions, and aims to increase trade with Tehran from the current level of €7.6bn (£5.8bn) a year to the pre-sanctions figure of almost €28bn.
Iran is a big market for French companies. . Peugeot is reported to be finalising a deal worth €500m (£380m) with the local manufacturer Iran Khodro. Iran has the largest car market in the Middle East and Peugeot and Renault are eager to resume sales in Iran.
Ellie Geranmayeh, a policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations thinktank, said Rouhani’s trip to France was much more about business than diplomacy.
“This is good for Tehran because it needs to boost trade, and it is good for Paris, because so long as it’s just business with Iran rather than a major political shift, they won’t endanger their advantageous position vis-a-vis Saudi Arabia,” she said.
“Politically, France and the Islamic Republic of Iran endorse very different systems of governance and often find themselves at idealogical odds with one another. But when it comes to doing business they speak a similar language and can agree to disagree on the politics. French companies, like many other European companies, are not starting from scratch in Iran, they have a wide long-sustained network base inside the country.”
While political relations between Iran and France are likely to continue their current course towards a rapprochement, Geranmayeh said there would not be overnight normalisation. “The two countries are far apart on the Assad question when it comes to the Syrian conflict – in some ways even more apart that the US and Iran. In recent years, France has solidified its security and economic links with Saudi Arabia, Iran’s regional rival, and so Paris will be careful not to damage this special relationship. But there is growing political space for France and Iran to engage constructively in Lebanon, a country whose stability is important for both sides and where the government in Beirut remains paralysed.”
France’s influence is felt keenly in Iranian culture. The Iranian intelligentsia is influenced by French intellectual movements, and French cinema is very popular. French literature, such as works by Marcel Proust, Gustave Flaubert and Stendhal, has been translated into Persian and continues to be read. Flaubert’s Sentimental Education, which is almost forgotten in English, is widely read in Persian.
On France’s side, post-revolutionary Iranian cinema is widely celebrated, and a number of Iranian film-makers, including the Cannes-winning Abbas Kiarostami, are well known. The Iranian actor Golshifteh Farahani, who has fallen foul of the Iranian authorities after posing nude for the French magazine Madam Figaro, is in exile in Paris.
France is home to a large number of Iranian exiles, including the former queen Farah Pahlavi, and Abdulhassan Banisadr, Iran’s first post-revolutionary president, who was impeached in June 1981. Maryam Rajavi, the leader of the radical exiled group MEK, which was listed as terrorist organisation by the US and the UK until recently, is also based in France.
MEK has opposed the nuclear deal and repeatedly holds rallies in Europe and the US against Iranian leaders. Critics of the MEK say it has a political agenda and has used human rights grounds to denounce any rapprochement by the west with the Islamic Republic. Iran has a history of executing MEK members and sentencing its supporters to lengthy jail terms.