Car-making deals, protests greet Iranian president in Paris

French businesses had a foothold in Iran long before the most recent sanctions began to bite.

French oil company Total said it would buy some 200,000 barrels of Iranian crude from the OPEC producer.

“Iran’s needs are enormous”, said Pierre Gattaz, head of France’s Medef employers association.

Also, the first visit of Rouhani to Paris in 17 years aimed to further cement political dialogue despite disagreements mainly over the Syrian conflict.

Rouhani, whose delegation to Rome signed business deals worth billions of dollars, has denied requesting the statues be covered.

“So we have to say the money will go to their hands for export of terrorism, fundamentalism, especially in Syria, in Iraq, in Lebanon”, she continued.

While France has asked European Union partners about possible new sanctions over those tests, too, the French government is also hoping to draw in Iran’s help in peacemaking in its region, notably in Syria and Yemen, and easing tensions with regional rival Saudi Arabia.

Access to the Iranian economy remains restricted by mostly US sanctions, which limit the mechanisms for financial transactions.

Before the Paris visit, Rouhani said that Iran is ready to welcome foreign investors adding there are no more obstacles to investment in Iran.

But he said French banks must support a corporate push into post-sanctions Iran.

Topless feminists from Femen planned their own special welcome for Iranian president Hassan Rouhani on Thursday by staging a mock hanging from a Paris bridge in protest over the country’s human rights abuses.

The French presidency said the total amount of the deals signed during Rouhani’s visit, including Airbus, could reach up to 30 billion euros ($32.8 billion).

“Investing in Iran is not exactly like investing in Holland or Denmark”, a French diplomatic source said.

The visit follows a deal between Iran and the west on the middle-eastern country’s nuclear program that resulted in the lifting earlier this month of trade sanctions.

Under Thursday’s deal, set to be finalised in the middle of this year, Peugeot and Iran Khodro plan to modernise a factory near Tehran and be producing cars by mid 2017.

Meanwhile, French protesters have demanded Mr Hollande challenge Mr Rouhani over human rights abuses in Iran – where people are jailed, executed and flogged or speaking against the regime or being gay and women are treated as second class citizens.

Iranian economic doors to Europe have opened in the wake of the declaration that it had met the terms of a multilateral nuclear agreement brokered in July.

“We organised this public display as a little reminder of the fact that every year, more than 800 people are sentenced to death in his country”, Sarah Constantin, a spokesperson for Femen France said.

Rouhani’s first ever visit to France this week comes after a nuclear deal was struck between the Islamic republic and world powers.