France Cuts Diplomatic Relations With Iran : Still Insists on Questioning Suspected Terrorist; Troops in Tehran Seal Off French Embassy

France broke off diplomatic relations with Iran on Friday in the climax to a bitter row over an Iranian Embassy employee wanted for questioning regarding his suspected role in a series of terrorist bombings in Paris last year.

From Tehran, the official Iranian news agency said Iran had broken relations with France because the country had mistreated its diplomats. A French government spokesman in Paris reported that Iranian security forces had sealed off the French Embassy in the Iranian capital.

‘Security Is Reciprocal’

“They have cordoned off our embassy in Tehran today and are refusing to allow people to leave the building, so our security is reciprocal,” the government spokesman said.

In Beirut, news of the diplomatic break was quickly followed by phone calls to international news agencies from an anonymous person claiming to represent Islamic Jihad (Islamic Holy War), a militant Shia Muslim group in Lebanon with strong connections to Iran. The caller warned that two French diplomats held hostage in the country would be killed in retaliation for the diplomatic break.

“It has been decided to immediately execute the death sentence on Marcel Carton and his colleague Marcel Fontaine,” the caller said, indicating that the warning was directed to French Premier Jacques Chirac.

Fontaine, 43, a vice consul at the French Embassy in Beirut, and Carton, 62, an attache at the mission, were kidnaped in Beirut in March, 1985.

A spokesman for the French Embassy said he doubts the authenticity of the claims, saying they were not backed up by evidence such as photographs of the hostages.

The diplomatic row between France and Iran began June 30 when the French government insisted that it be allowed to interrogate an interpreter in the Iranian Embassy here. Judge Gilles Boulouque, a leading counterterrorist specialist, said the French had evidence that the interpreter, Vahid Gordji, had been involved in some of the bombing attacks in Paris last year.

Those explosions killed 13 people, injured more than 200 and sharply reduced tourism to the French capital during the summer.

Authorities said they believe that Gordji is actually the embassy’s second in command and its chief intelligence officer.

The Iranians would not surrender Gordji nor allow French police into the embassy building near the Seine River. They insist that he has diplomatic immunity and therefore is protected by international convention.

French government sources indicated that the government, whose position is that interpreters do not have diplomatic immunity, would inform member states of the European Communities and ask for international support for its position.

In the ensuing 2 1/2 weeks, a series of incidents and rhetoric from both sides has sharply increased diplomatic tensions.

French police surrounded the Iranian Embassy, a handsome building in an elegant residential district across the river from the Eiffel Tower, to prevent Gordji from sneaking out and secretly leaving the country.

‘The Law Is the Law’

French President Francois Mitterrand supported the investigating magistrate, declaring, “The law is the law, and an Iranian, just as any other, must submit to it.”

The Iranians in turn dispatched Revolutionary Guards to seal off the French Embassy in Tehran.

They also accused a French Embassy first secretary, Jean-Paul Torri, of espionage and dope trafficking, a charge the French vehemently denied. The official Iranian news agency, IRNA, reported Friday that Torri still “is bound to appear before the Islamic revolutionary court to answer some questions.”

Five days ago, the Iranians claimed that one of their diplomats, Mohsen Aminzadeh, was “assaulted and badly mauled” by police on the French side of the Geneva airport, which straddles the Swiss-French border, when he was returning to Paris from Switzerland.

Throws a Screaming Fit

According to the French police, when they tried to search the Iranian’s luggage, he threw a fit and fell to the ground, purposely banging his head against the floor and screaming. He was taken to a hospital in Geneva, where Swiss doctors said he did not appear to have been injured in an attack. Two days later, the Iranian left the hospital on a stretcher and was put aboard a plane bound for Iran.

After the Geneva airport incident, Tehran radio broadcast that France had apologized to Iran, which the French government immediately denied.

On Monday, two Iranian gunboats opened fire on a French container ship, the Ville d’Anvers, in the Persian Gulf, damaging the ship but causing no casualties.

As the controversy became more heated, Iran blocked the departure of two French nationals from Tehran, and France retaliated by stopping 13 Iranians from leaving the country by road at four points along the West German and Swiss borders.

France Takes First Step

On Thursday, Iran threatened to break relations unless French police moved away from Iran’s embassy here and the police who allegedly beat Aminzadeh at the Swiss border were punished. But on Friday, France was first to take the step.

French External Relations Minister Jean-Bernard Raimond curtailed an official visit to African countries, returned to Paris, declared that Tehran’s ultimatum was unacceptable and issued the order severing relations with Iran.

In a statement, the External Relations Ministry declared: “France considers that the process of breaking relations has already begun and the consequences should be drawn. That is why it has decided to break diplomatic relations with Iran immediately.”

It was the first time since World War II that France has taken the initiative in breaking off diplomatic relations with another nation.

The ministry said France still insists that Gordji present himself for questioning but that authorities have no plans to order any of the estimated 180 police surrounding the Iranian Embassy to force entry, since the building still has extraterritorial status.

40 People in Embassy

They say there are 40 people in the Iranian Embassy, including five with full diplomatic status, and 15 French nationals in the French Embassy in Tehran, 11 of them with diplomatic status.

The French government spokesman said both nations agreed that the embassy personnel would “pack and leave within five days.”

Some commentators in Paris warned late Friday that by severing relations with Iran, France runs the risk of again being the target of pro-Iranian terrorists, of further endangering hostages held in Lebanon and of causing further difficulties for French diplomats still in Tehran.

When he took office last year, Premier Chirac moved to improve relations with Tehran partly to gain a lever for the return of five French hostages--the two diplomats and three journalists, kidnaped in Beirut and believed to be held by militant Shia groups loyal to Iran--and partly to reduce terrorist attacks in France.

A Leading Arms Source

But it has been an uphill task because France, next to the Soviet Union, is the leading supplier of arms to Iraq, Iran’s foe in the almost seven-year-old war in the Persian Gulf. It was a French-supplied Exocet missile fired by a French-built Iraqi warplane, for instance, that damaged the U.S. Navy frigate Stark in the gulf last May, with the loss of 37 lives.

At the same time, the break in Franco-Iranian relations will almost certainly further isolate Iran from the West, when tensions between Tehran and leading democratic countries are already at their highest level in several years.

The move also comes as the Soviet Union has made tentative steps toward building a new relationship with Iran.

The United States broke relations with Iran in April, 1980, after unsuccessful attempts to obtain the release of the 52 American hostages captured during the U.S. Embassy takeover by Iranian militants in November, 1979.

Issue of Chinese Missiles

In recent weeks, there has been heated rhetoric between Washington and Tehran over possible Iranian deployment of Chinese-supplied Silkworm missiles in the gulf and the potential confrontation brewing between the two countries as a result of the Reagan Administration’s decision to protect Kuwaiti ships in the region.

In Washington, State Department spokesman Charles Redman said of the break, “We understand and support the French decision.” He declined to elaborate.

Iran also had a major diplomatic row with Britain last month. That incident, apparently triggered by the arrest of a junior Iranian diplomat in Manchester on May 9, led to a series of ugly incidents that left Anglo-Iranian diplomatic relations hanging by a thread.

‘Part of a Conspiracy’

“The Iranians are likely to interpret the French move as part of a giant Western conspiracy against them to which you can now add a French chapter,” a British Foreign Office official familiar with the region noted in London.

But the addition of such a French chapter carries additional significance, some Middle East watchers in London maintain.

They note that it was in Paris that the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini found sanctuary and plotted the final stages of the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Shah of Iran and from there that he triumphantly returned to his homeland.

The Islamic Republic’s first president, Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, also found refuge in France--both before the revolution and after he lost favor with Khomeini.

Times staff writer Tyler Marshall, in London, contributed to this article.