In a major speech in Paris before the French prime minister, Manuel Valls, and the country’s main pro-business confederation, Medef, Hassan Rouhani said the first official visit by an Iranian president in 17 years was a clear sign that French companies were welcome to Tehran.
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Rouhani is reaching out to European businesses on the first visit by an Iranian president to Europe since 1999.
Iran’s President Hassan Rouhani waves to reporters at the conclusion of his press conference in Tehran, Iran.
As the Hassan Rouahni visits Europe, photos of Syrian children have been published with posters calling on Hassan Rouhani to stop his intervention in the country’s affair.
French officials said Iran was putting the finishing touches to the Airbus deal, and Iran earlier this week gave estimates of up to 127 Airbus planes, but Iranian Transport Minister Abbas Akhoundi declined to give further details and sources close to the discussions said technical talks were continuing.
Yet clouds hung over the historic outreach trip.
Although many sanctions relating to Iran’s nuclear programme have been lifted, most United States measures remain in place.
Large white boxes were therefore placed in front of these statues in a move ANSA, an Italian news agency, said was purely out of respect for Iranian culture.
In Jerusalem, Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein decried the “hypocrisy” of France and Italy hosting the Iranian president, “president of a Holocaust-denying regime”.
Mr Rouhani’s five-day visit to Italy and France is the first by an Iranian president in almost two decades.
“Welcome Rouhani, Executioner of Freedom”, read a huge banner across the pedestrian bridge over the Seine River near the Eiffel Tower.
But the thrust of the trip was about improving economic and diplomatic relations after years of isolation for his country of 80 million people.
President Rouhani is keen to bring Western know how and products back home to prove to Iranians that the nuclear accord, contested by many hardliners, will help ease their prolonged economic hardships.
Iran is likely to need hundreds of new aircraft in the coming years as it re-establishes commercial air travel restricted by the sanctions.
Meanwhile, French manufacturer Peugeot said it had signed a joint venue with local carmaker Khodro to manufacture cars in Iran. “What we experienced under sanctions was a lose-lose situation that was the result of a wrong policy, a wrong policy that hurt everyone… but today we should seize the opportunity of the era after sanctions”, Rouhani said.
Oil giant Total, engineering group Alstom and carmakers PSA Peugeot-Citroen and Renault-Nissan, with a past presence in Iran, are among companies that could clinch deals, too. But Iran’s latest ballistic missile tests prompted new USA sanctions.
“It’s true that Iran has returned to the global community, but it doesn’t mean we agree on everything, especially on Syria”, Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius said on Wednesday.
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Rouhani said the protracted, complex – but ultimately successful – nuclear negotiations could serve as an example for solving multiple crises in the Middle East. Rouhani suggested that to mutually enjoy the conditions provided by JCPOA implementation, both sides should work to meet banking and insurance requirements as a platform to revive the bilateral trade.
