The two French nationals detained for three years face the death penalty after being charged for “espionage” for the benefit of Israeli services. Paris brandishes the threat of sanctions. Enough to fold Tehran?
The situation worsens for the two French hostages from Iran. Arrested in May 2022 on the last day of a tourist trip, Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris are charged for “spying” for the benefit of Israel, and as such a death penalty.
According to their relatives, the couple is also accused of “conspiracy to overthrow the regime” and “corruption on earth”. Tehran has not yet confirmed if new accusations have been brought against them.
“We have not been formally notified by the Iranian authorities of charges weighing on our two compatriots,” the French Minister of Foreign Affairs reacted this Thursday, July 3, Jean-Noël Barrot. “If the charges that were mentioned were confirmed, we would consider them completely unjustified and unfounded,” he added.
Forced confessions
Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris have been detained for three years “in conditions comparable to torture”, according to Jean-Noël Barrot. At the time of their arrest, the regime had broadcast a video of forced confessions in which the two French people indicated that they were members of the DGSE, the French intelligence services, and work in the “reversal of the Iranian regime”. But so far, Iran only indicated that the two French people were accused of espionage, without ever specifying for which country.
The Israeli offensive on Iran, then the intervention of the United States, seem to have changed the situation. As the regime leads an intense hunt for Israeli “spies”, the tourist couple is now accused of working for Mossad, Israeli intelligence and external operations services.
Is this a way of making France pay its support for the “right of Israel to protect itself”, mentioned by Emmanuel Macron after the first Israeli strikes? For David Rigoulet-Roze, associate researcher at IRIS and specialist in the Middle East contacted by BFMTV.com, the fate of hostages is mainly linked to the issue of international sanctions, which Westerners could reimpose to Iran.
“Snapback”
The agreement signed in Vienna in 2015, known as “JCPOA”, with the five permanent members of the UN Security Council (France, Germany, United Kingdom, China, Russia, United States) planned to supervise the Iranian nuclear program, in return for a reduction in these international sanctions.
In 2018, Donald Trump unilaterally withdrew the United States from the agreement-which Téhéran was conforming, according to the International Atomic Energy Agency (AIAA). In retaliation, Iran has considerably increased its reserves of enriched materials and brought the threshold to 60%, less than 90% necessary for the manufacture of the atomic weapon, but very far from the 3.67% ceiling fixed by the Vienna agreement.
Resolution 2231 of the Security Council, which endorses this agreement, provides for a clause called “snapback” allowing to repimony the sanctions in the event of violation of the agreement. According to this resolution, introduced at the time at the request of France, any “participating state” in the agreement can trigger this mechanism by entering the Security Council of a complaint on the “notable non-compliance with commitments from another participant”.
A “message” sent to France?
“It is a veto inverted insofar as no member country of the Security Council can oppose the restoration of sanctions if a state signatory of the agreement manages to assert a characterized situation of infringement of Iran to its obligations inherent in the agreement,” explains the specialist of the Middle East David Rigoulet-Roze.
However, this option is clearly mentioned by the European signatories of the JCPOA, France and the United Kingdom in mind, since Iran has compliedly cut bridges with the AIEA and has raised fears of an acceleration of its nuclear program.
France can “reapplicate Iran the world embargo on arms, nuclear equipment and banks and insurance that had been lifted ten years ago,” threatened the Minister of French Foreign Affairs, Jean-Noël Barrot, on LCI on Saturday, June 28.
“The restoration of international sanctions (especially on oil) rightly worries Iran which is already under the maximum pressure of American sanctions restored by Donald Trump,” said Rigoulet-Roze. By instilling Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, “Tehran sent an implicitly threatening message to Paris”.
“Adjustment of language elements”
This Thursday, July 3, Jean-Noël Barrot said that “the question of possible decisions about sanctions will be Conditioned in the “problem” of French hostages. The sign of an “adjustment of language elements”, according to David Rigoulet-Roze. The Minister “explicitly articulates the problem of sanctions with that of the release of the two French”.
“This is an eminently complex situation which requires undergrading all the variables at stake to manage to release them as quickly as possible, without giving in to what is no more and no less than a logic of blackmail”, continues David Rigoulet-Roze.
For France, the calendar accelerates. Resolution 2231 of the Security Council expires on October 18. If she wants to repress sanctions to Iran, the “snapback” procedure must be started about three months before the deadline.
A “consular” file that has become explosive
Saying himself “criticism” of French diplomacy on this subject, the researcher specializing in Iran Sébastien Regnault affirms him that “the arrest of Cécile Kohler and Jacques is a consular file which should never have become an issue of diplomacy”.
“These are affairs that are settled behind the scenes. We must decorrect their fate of the question of nuclear that has nothing to do with them,” he said with bfmtv.com.
“The Iranian administrative machine is complex with several power centers,” depicts the researcher at the CNRS. “If they are not released, it is not because someone is because they are always in prison-the supreme guide has other things to do. It is because no one dares to make the decision of their release for fear of having repercussions on their careers,” he said.
“Their indictment may have been decided by a ‘hard’ of the diet, but you should not go into a blackmail game to sanctions,” he said.
Western hostages, an exchange currency for Tehran?
There are many cases of Western prisoners in Iran. “The Iranian regime knows full well that both physical and mental integrity of our nationals constitutes for us a priority and therefore it thinks of being able to cynically play it,” said researcher David Rigoulet-Roze.
In 2022, the Belgian humanitarian worker Olivier Vandecasteele had been arrested and detained for 15 months in Iran. He had finally been released in exchange for an Iranian who had organized an attack project against an opposition group in the regime in Villepinte (Seine-Saint-Denis) in 2018.
More recently, like Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, the British couple Craig and Lindsay Foreman was imprisoned in January 2025 and suspected of spying.
If the death penalty is a tool for repression widely used by the mullah regime, Western hostages have so far been saved. Among the foreign nationals imprisoned in Iran, only binationals were sentenced to capital punishment.
