The nightmare of Cécile Kohler, 41, and her partner, Jacques Paris, 70, imprisoned in Iran for more than three years, is over, but not completely. These two French professors, arrested on May 7, 2022, are still prohibited from leaving the country and have therefore not been able to return to France after being released this Tuesday night from the sinister Evin prison in Tehran, known for housing political prisoners. Especially in the sinister pavilion 209 guarded directly by the powerful parallel army of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. This couple has spent much of the last three long years there, separately and often in isolation. Both are now at the French Embassy in the Iranian capital, after obtaining conditional freedom thanks to, it is assumed, an exchange and the release in France of an Iranian citizen, although Paris has not recognized it.
His case has been one more of what is known as hostage diplomacy, which the Islamic Republic of Iran has been putting into practice since its inception in 1979, when it held 66 diplomats and workers from the United States Embassy in Tehran. 52 of them remained kidnapped there for 444 days in a scandal that, it is believed, cost Jimmy Carter the presidency of the United States at the polls.
Since then, the Islamic Republic of Iran has used the arbitrary imprisonment of Westerners for two reasons: either to obtain something in return, especially the release of Iranians convicted in Europe, often on terrorism charges – as happened in 2023 with the aid worker – or to pressure the West in order to access political or economic benefits; for example, the lifting of sanctions over the Iranian nuclear program. Also to collect alleged debts from other countries or recover frozen Iranian funds abroad.
The sequence of events and the statements of officials of the Islamic Republic indicate that the release of the two professors has been, also on this occasion, the bargaining chip with which Tehran has obtained the release of one of its citizens in France. This was suggested on September 11 by his Minister of Foreign Affairs, Abbas Araghchi, in a television interview in which he alluded to the fact that the “exchange” of Mahdieh Esfandiari, an Iranian in preventive detention since February in France, for the two “French prisoners” was approaching its final phase.
On October 22, Esfandiari, accused of advocating terrorism, was granted conditional release with the obligation to report to a police station once a week. Iran claims that this 39-year-old linguist was arbitrarily imprisoned for defending the rights of Palestinians and denouncing Israel’s genocide in Gaza on social media.
Like Kohler and Paris now in Iran, Esfandiari is prohibited from leaving French territory. Therefore, it is possible that the teaching couple will not be able to return to Europe until that Iranian citizen can travel to her country in turn. Their trial is scheduled between January 13 and 16, 2026, so “a possible scenario” is that the two Frenchmen remain at the French diplomatic legation in Tehran until that date, highlights from Paris Clément Therme, a researcher on the Middle East associated with the French Institute of International Relations (IFRI).
Unless, highlights this expert – author of an IFRI report on hostage diplomacy – that “for reasons of state, the return of the Iranian woman and that of Cécile are anticipated. [Kohler] y Jacques [Paris] to France”.
A document from the think tank points out that Iran has used hostage taking as “a strategic tool of its foreign policy” since 2014, especially in relation to the negotiation of the nuclear program behind which the West suspects, something that Tehran denies.
“Torture”
Iran still holds around a dozen Westerners. In recent years, he has arrested people of various European nationalities——and also Americans. However, France is one of the countries that has suffered the most from Iran’s practice of arbitrarily detaining foreigners, usually accusing them of spying for their countries or for their regional nemesis, Israel.
In 2025, after France abandoned its policy of discreetly negotiating his release to publicly denounce this hostage diplomacy, several French people have regained their freedom. For example, Olivier Grondeau, imprisoned since 2022 and released in March, and Lennart Monterlos, a cyclist arrested at the age of 18, who returned to France in October after spending more than 100 days behind bars. Also in October, on the 14th, Kohler and Paris were sentenced for espionage, to 20 and 17 years in prison, respectively.
These long sentences, paradoxically, have probably “accelerated their release,” Therme emphasizes, since Iran has never released a Western hostage without first trying him and thus “affirming the authority” of its judiciary.
Months earlier, these two professors had appeared on television acknowledging their alleged crimes, in confessions “extracted under duress,” denounced the French Government and the human rights NGO Amnesty International. The practice of televising alleged confessions from prisoners, obtained through torture, according to Amnesty and other NGOs, is also common in Iran.
Kohler and Paris, union activists, had been arrested on May 7, 2022, on the last day of a tourist trip to Iran, after meeting with striking Iranian teachers. His arrest gave way to what his relatives and the French Government itself have also defined as “torture.” Imprisoned in wing 209 of the Evin prison, the two teachers whom France describes as “state hostages” were separated and forced to remain in isolation for long periods of time in tiny cells, without windows and under a neon light on 24 hours a day. The two captives did not even have a mattress and slept on the floor. They also did not go out, except on rare occasions, to the prison yard.
This couple has left Evin “physically unscathed,” declared their lawyer Chirinne Ardakani, but “they are not free yet. They will not be free until the minute they can hug their loved ones. Until that moment, we will continue to mobilize.”
Clément Therme, author of Misconceptions about Iran (Editorial Le Cavalier bleu), believes that “what is interesting in this case is the reversal of the burden of proof” and the political use of the term hostage. France has carried out “this exchange of an Iranian hostage in France for two French hostages”, at the same time that “Iran uses exactly the same arguments by claiming that they have exchanged an Iranian hostage in France for two French prisoners in Iran”. For the IFRI expert, it is “an information war”, whose objective is “to restore the image of the Islamic Republic through this exchange, denouncing France and accusing Paris of also practicing hostage diplomacy.”
