Iran has released French nationals Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris after more than three and a half years in detention, closing one chapter of a case Paris has long held up as emblematic of what it calls Iran’s practice of detaining foreign nationals on politicized grounds.
The two left Iran on Tuesday and were received in France on Wednesday, after traveling via Azerbaijan, with President Emmanuel Macron saying their return marked the end of a “terrible ordeal.”
Kohler, 41, and Paris, 72, were arrested in May 2022 during a tourist trip to Iran and later accused of espionage and other national-security offenses, charges France said were unfounded.
They were held in Tehran’s Evin prison before being moved in November 2025 to the French embassy in Tehran under a form of house arrest that still left them unable to leave the country.
Macron’s office said the two left Iran by road “without any special coordination with the US and Israeli forces” operating in the region.
Their release appears to have come out of a broader understanding between Paris and Tehran, though both sides have publicly avoided describing it as a straightforward swap.
Iran’s official IRNA news agency said the two were freed under an understanding that France would in turn release Mahdieh Esfandiari, an Iranian student living in Lyon, and that France had earlier withdrawn its complaint against Iran at the International Court of Justice.
Reuters reported that Esfandiari, convicted in France in late February for glorifying terrorism in social media posts, had already been released after serving nearly a year and was appealing the conviction.
Le Monde, citing diplomatic and expert sources, reported that Esfandiari’s case had become tied in practice to the fate of the French pair: after she was released under judicial supervision in October 2025, Iran allowed Kohler and Paris to leave prison for the French embassy, but their full departure from Iran came only after Esfandiari’s house arrest in France was lifted.
There is also evidence of other concessions already on the table. The ICJ case France had filed against Iran over the detention of Kohler and Paris was formally removed from the court’s list in September 2025 at France’s request.
Reuters reported that French officials declined to spell out the full terms that secured the pair’s departure, while Le Monde said no explicit bargaining was publicly acknowledged by Paris even though the sequence of events pointed to a negotiated quid pro quo.
The timing has fueled debate in France over whether geopolitics also played a role.
Reuters wrote that the release came as Paris sought to distance itself from the US-Israeli war effort, while Le Monde quoted analysts who described the move as a calculated Iranian gesture toward France at a moment when Macron had criticized Washington’s approach and France had resisted force-based measures around the Strait of Hormuz.
Reuters reported that the release came as Paris was trying to put some distance between itself and the US-Israeli war effort, while Le Monde cited analysts who saw it as a calculated Iranian signal to France at a time when Macron had openly criticized Washington’s approach and Paris had opposed using force around the Strait of Hormuz.
French officials deny softening their position toward Tehran. But the case fits a broader pattern in which Iran has been accused by Western governments and rights advocates of using detained foreigners or dual nationals as leverage in disputes with other states.
France itself has repeatedly described Kohler and Paris as “state hostages,” a phrase that reflects that view, even as Iran rejects the accusation.
The precise texts are still only partly visible. The White House never publicly confirmed the full contents of the US 15-point proposal, saying only that some reporting had “elements of truth” but was “not entirely factual,” while Iranian state and semi-official media published a far more detailed public account of Tehran’s own terms.
Still, enough has emerged to show how far apart the two sides remain.
Public reporting on the US proposal described a plan centered on rolling back Iran’s nuclear and missile capabilities, curbing support for allied armed groups and reopening the Strait of Hormuz.
Iran’s 10-point plan pointed in the opposite direction. It sought recognition of enrichment, sweeping sanctions relief, compensation, continued influence over Hormuz, US military withdrawal from the region and an end to attacks on Iran and its allies.
That distinction matters because a ceasefire can stop the shooting without answering the political question of what comes next.
On the American side, the administration’s stated war aims remained consistent through March and April: destroy Iran’s missile arsenal and production capability, sever support for what Washington calls terrorist proxies, and ensure Iran never acquires a nuclear weapon.
Tehran’s public plan, by contrast, treated the ceasefire as the start of an arrangement that would preserve core elements of Iranian power rather than dismantle them.
In March, that divide was already visible. Time, citing reporting from Israeli Channel 12 and other outlets, said the US proposal called for dismantling Iran’s nuclear capabilities, ending uranium enrichment on Iranian soil, decommissioning Natanz, Isfahan and Fordow, limiting missile activity, ending support for proxy groups and keeping Hormuz open.
Iran rejected the proposal and, even before its fuller 10-point plan appeared publicly, made clear it was seeking a permanent end to the war rather than a simple pause.
Enrichment: rollback versus recognition
No issue illustrates the contradiction more clearly than uranium enrichment.
The publicly reported US plan sought to end enrichment inside Iran and dismantle the country’s main nuclear facilities. Tehran’s published plan did the reverse.
Iranian media versions of the 10-point framework explicitly demanded acceptance of enrichment, and some outlets reported that the phrase appeared in the Farsi version even though it was omitted from some English versions shared publicly by Iranian media.
That is not a minor drafting dispute. It is a disagreement over first principles. Washington’s reported position was that Iran’s nuclear program should be rolled back at its core. Tehran’s position was that enrichment should survive in principle, with any later discussion focused on scope rather than existence.
So long as those remain the baseline positions, the ceasefire may limit violence while leaving one of the central causes of the conflict unresolved.
Allied militias: disarmament versus protection
The same gap runs through the issue of Iran’s regional allies.
The Trump administration said one of its central objectives was to sever Iran’s support for proxies. Reporting on the 15-point proposal likewise said Washington wanted Tehran to stop financing and arming those groups.
Iran’s public plan moved the other way. It called for an end to attacks not only on Iran but on its allies, and its 10-point version included a halt to war on all fronts, including Lebanon.
That contradiction was not theoretical. It surfaced almost immediately after the ceasefire announcement.
AP reported that Israel backed the US ceasefire with Iran but said it would continue operations against Hezbollah in Lebanon, directly undercutting mediation claims that Lebanon was covered.
In a statement on X on Wednesday, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office said Israel backed Trump’s efforts to ensure “Iran no longer poses a nuclear, missile and terror threat to America, Israel, Iran’s Arab neighbors and the world”. But the two-week ceasefire “does not include Lebanon”, he said.
If one side treats allied militias as part of the problem to be dismantled and the other treats them as part of the ceasefire to be protected, the truce does not settle this regional dimension of the war.
Hormuz, sanctions and US forces
The Strait of Hormuz offers another example of rival end states disguised as one ceasefire.
For Washington, reopening the strait was a condition of de-escalation. For Tehran, public versions of the 10-point plan framed continued Iranian control over Hormuz as part of the postwar order itself.
The Guardian and AP as well as IRGC media reported that the ceasefire allowed passage under Iranian military oversight, while AP also said Iran and Oman could charge transit fees under the arrangement.
That may have eased an immediate crisis in shipping, but it did not mean the two sides agreed on the underlying principle.
Later on Wednesday, Oman said it had signed agreements that prohibit charging ships passing through the waterway.
The same is true of sanctions and troop presence.
US reporting suggested sanctions relief would come in exchange for major Iranian concessions on enrichment, missiles and proxy activity. Tehran’s public plan demanded the lifting of primary and secondary sanctions, an end to UN and IAEA measures, compensation, and the withdrawal of US combat forces from the region.
Those are not different routes to the same destination. They reflect different answers to the basic question of who is supposed to come out of this war constrained and who is supposed to come out vindicated.
A ceasefire with competing narratives
The public record supports saying Trump at one stage described Iran’s 10-point proposal as a workable basis for negotiations. It does not support saying Washington accepted Tehran’s terms as stated.
The White House explicitly declined to confirm the full contents of the US proposal, and AP reported that key details of the ceasefire remained unclear even after the announcement.
The safer conclusion is narrower: Tehran published its expectations in unusually concrete form, while Washington left more of its own position in the realm of reported outlines and official war aims.
That leaves both sides room to claim success. Washington says military pressure forced Tehran toward talks. Tehran says resistance forced Washington to step back from a wider assault and negotiate from a different starting point.
But the announced expectations still clash on enrichment, allied militias, sanctions, US troop presence and control of Hormuz.
On the evidence now in public, this looks less like a settled peace than a pause built on incompatible definitions of what peace would mean.
If the ceasefire is to become something more durable, talks slated for Friday in Pakistan would have to narrow those gaps rather than merely postpone them, with the first day of the truce already marked by an attack on Iran’s Lavan refinery and reports of drone activity from Kuwait.
For now, both governments are presenting the pause as proof that force worked.
The unanswered question, especially for Iranians living with the consequences of both war and state power, is whether this truce can produce anything beyond a temporary reduction in fire – and whether any real change in Iran lies somewhere beyond the victory narratives now being claimed on both sides.
Information obtained by Iran International shows that Hatami, who was executed on April 2, remains unburied as authorities continue to withhold his body.
Hatami was one of the defendants in a case linked to a fire at the Mahmoud Kaveh Basij base on Namjoo Street in eastern Tehran during the January protests.
Others in the same case included Mohammadamin Biglari, Shahin Vahedparast Kalur, Abolfazl Salehi Siavashani and Ali Fahim, all of whom were sentenced to death.
Biglari and Vahedparast were executed on April 5, while Fahim’s execution was carried out on Monday, April 6.
Informed sources told Iran International that Hatami’s body has not been released because his name appeared on a website linked to the Mojahedin-e Khalgh organization, an allegation his family strongly rejects.
Sources familiar with the case said Hatami was an industrial design student at the University of Tehran and was fluent in three languages.
A source with knowledge of the events of January 8 said the case involved seven defendants, none of whom had any role in starting the fire.
According to the source, Hatami and the others entered the Basij base with around 50 other people only after the fire had already broken out.
Minutes later, another fire began. Many managed to escape, but seven people, including Hatami, were unable to flee.
They went to the rooftop, where they were detained by Basij forces and severely beaten, the source said.
Judicial authorities later accused the defendants of trying to gain access to the armory.
After their arrest, the detainees were subjected to severe interrogations and then transferred to Ghezel Hesar prison.
They were denied in-person visits throughout their detention and were allowed only phone calls.
Their trial was presided over by Judge Abolghasem Salavati, and they were denied access to lawyers of their own choosing.
Death sentences were issued on February 7.
Sources told Iran International that the confessions in the case were extracted under pressure and coercion, and that the judicial process ended in executions carried out without the defendants and their families having full knowledge of the proceedings.
In the same case, 28-year-old Shahin Vahedparast was also executed on April 5, and his body, too, has still not been returned to his family, according to informed sources.
Those sources said Vahedparast’s wife was four months pregnant at the time of his execution.
Relatives said he had dreamed of opening a restaurant with her.
