Ambassador of Iran to France: after his summons by Stéphane Séjourné, why some claim that he does not exist ?

View of the facade of the Iranian embassy in Paris. Stéphane Séjourné, French Minister of Foreign Affairs. Google Street View/Maxppp

Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné had to make an update after announcing the summons of the Iranian ambassador to France. In question, the rumor very quickly spread according to which there is no Iranian ambassador in France.

French Foreign Minister Stéphane Séjourné announced on Sunday April 14 that he had summoned the Iranian ambassador to France this Monday to send a message of firmness" after the Iranian strikes carried out during the night from Saturday to Sunday against Israel.

"Tomorrow, I asked the services of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs to summon the Iranian ambassador to come" this "message of firmness", the minister declared on Sunday on public television France 2.

J’ai convoqué l’ambassadeur d’Iran en France demain.

Notre message doit être celui de la fermeté, pour assurer la désescalade. pic.twitter.com/X2k2vRZ7Hq

— Stéphane Séjourné (@steph_sejourne) April 14, 2024

Quickly, influential accounts on the networks attacked the minister, indicating that there is no Iranian ambassador to France. This is the case, for example, of the geopolitical scientist Caroline Gactéros, followed by more than 30,000 people on X, who has since deleted her message and published another in which she apologizes for the ;rsquo;error. 

Régis de Castelnau, lawyer followed by more than 64,000 people on this same network, also targeted the minister by writing "He is super strong. He summons an ambassador who does not exist. Bahram Gassemi appointed in 2017 left in 2022. There is no longer an Iranian ambassador to France. Just a 'charge d'affaires'# 39;".

A procedure in progress but an ambassador definitely in office

However, as Checknews points out, there is indeed an Iranian ambassador in France, who replaced the famous "charge d'affaires" mentioned in the tweets. According to the Libération verification site, this ambassador, Mohammad Amin-Nejad was proposed by Iran to France in the fall and was was approved on February 7. The embassy website, however, has still not been updated and only refers to the former charge d'affaires M.& nbsp;Seyed Hossein Sammifar, who has been acting since 2021.

The procedure is almost complete. After the delivery of the figurative copies of letters of credence to the Deputy Head of Protocol on March 18, all that remains now is to deliver these letters to the Head of State.

This step is a formality. This "does not take away absolutely anything from the fact that it is now already ambassador", affirms the Quai d’Orsay to our colleagues.

Ces mensonges ont été vus 1 million de fois, les démentis sont passés inaperçus.

La viralité du dénigrement est sans commune mesure avec celle du rétablissement des faits. Or, il y a bien un ambassadeur d’Iran à Paris : M. AMIN-NEJAD, convoqué aujourd’hui au Ministère.

3/4

— Stéphane Séjourné (@steph_sejourne) April 15, 2024

Minister Stéphane Séjourné himself wrote a series of tweets to denounce the rapid dissemination of false information, deploring that "the virality of the denigration is beyond measure with that of the restoration of the facts.