France – France 24, Nov. 26, 2025
Iran will allow two French citizens held by the Islamic republic for over three years to return home in “exchange” for France freeing an Iranian citizen “in the next two months”, Tehran’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.
