The reaction was not long in coming.
Iran announced on Thursday the closure of the French Institute for Research in Iran (Ifri), the oldest and most important French study center in the country, in response to the publication, in Charlie Hebdo, cartoons deemed insulting to Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
The Iranian authorities had warned France, as of Wednesday, that they would take measures after the publication the same day by the satirical weekly of these drawings featuring the highest religious and political figure of the Islamic Republic of Iran.
A “first step”
“The ministry is ending the activities of the French Institute for Research in Iran (Ifri) as a first step,” the Iranian foreign ministry said in a statement.
He accuses the French authorities of “continued inaction in the face of expressions of anti-Islamism and the spread of racist hatred in French publications”.
In its press release, the ministry asks the French government to demand accountability from the "authors (of the propagation) of such hatred", stressing that the "Iranian people" would follow "seriously" the response that France would provide.
He also calls on Paris to carry out "a serious fight against Islamophobia".
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The cartoons published in Charlie Hebdo were selected in a competition launched in December, as protests - which authorities say are 'riots' - continued in Iran to protest the September 16 death in custody of Mahsa Amini, an Iranian Kurd arrested for violating the country's strict dress code.
The newspaper argued in December that this "international competition" was aimed at supporting "Iranians who are fighting for their freedom".
The issue contains several sexual cartoons featuring Ayatollah Khamenei and other Iranian clerics, as well as cartoons denouncing the use of capital punishment as a tactic to intimidate protesters.
The summoned ambassador
Asked by AFP, the French embassy in Tehran said it had no immediate comment.
But before the announcement of the closure of Ifri, the French Minister of Foreign Affairs Catherine Colonna had indicated that "freedom of the press exists (in France) contrary to what is happening in Iran", recalling that the offense of blasphemy does not exist in French law.
"The bad policy is the one followed by Iran which practices violence against its own population," she added Thursday, interviewed on the French television channel LCI.
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On Wednesday, his Iranian counterpart Hossein Amir-Abdollahian denounced "an insulting and indecent act" which will "not go without a firm response".
“Iran in no way accepts the insult of its (…) Islamic, religious and national values (…) and France has no right to insult what is sacred (…) for Muslim countries under the pretext of freedom of expression,” ministry spokesman Nasser Kanani said the same day.
Iran "considers the French government responsible for this heinous, insulting and unjustified act", he added.
The French ambassador to Iran, Nicolas Roche, was summoned the same day by Foreign Affairs in Tehran.
Ifri's headquarters in central Tehran had been closed for many years.
It had reopened under the presidency of the moderate Hassan Rohani (2013-2021) as a sign of the warming of Franco-Iranian relations.
It includes a rich library, used by students of the French language and Iranian scholars.
Ifri was born in 1983 after the merger of the French Archaeological Delegation in Iran (DAFI), created in 1897, and the French Institute of Iranology in Tehran (IFIT), founded in 1947 by Henry Corbin, according to its website .
