Iran Plans Spy Trials for French : Paris Fears Envoys, Rest of Embassy Staff Imperiled

Iran announced Saturday that French diplomats based in Tehran will be tried for espionage, escalating the war of nerves between the two nations a day after each broke formal diplomatic ties with the other.

The announcement, by Iranian Interior Minister Ali Akbar Mohtashemi, asserted that members of the French Embassy staff in Tehran have helped foes of the Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini’s revolutionary government escape from Iran and served as links among movements bent on overthrowing the regime.

Mohtashemi’s statements, transmitted by the official Islamic Republic News Agency, raised fears in Paris that French Embassy personnel might be seized as hostages, as American diplomats were overwhelmed and taken captive in 1979, or placed on trial for trumped-up offenses. Fifteen French citizens are based in Paris’ embassy in Iran, 11 of them with diplomatic rank.

No Word on Hostages

There was no word Saturday on the fate of French hostages in Lebanon, two of whom were threatened with death in reprisal for France’s rupture with Iran. The threats against diplomats Marcel Carton, 62, and Marcel Fontaine, 43, were made in telephone calls to news agency offices in Beirut shortly after Paris’ announcement was made Friday. The caller claimed to speak for Islamic Jihad, or Islamic Holy War, a secretive organization of Shia Muslim militants with strong sympathies for Khomeini’s Shia regime.

French External Relations Minister Jean-Bernard Raimond met for an hour Saturday with relatives of four of the six French citizens now being held hostage in Beirut. He told reporters afterward that “I have very little to tell you” and declined further comment.

Speaks of Crisis

President Francois Mitterrand, visiting a small town in eastern France, spoke of the crisis: “Clouds, storms and tempests, you can find them all over the world, and France is caught in them because it cannot be indifferent, above all when its interests and its citizens are themselves affected and worried by these tumults.”

In Beirut on Saturday, the pro-Iranian Shia Muslim militia organization Hezbollah, or Party of God, said that Iran would not be alone in dealing with the consequences of the diplomatic rupture, which it described as a “Zionist scheme.” It added that Hezbollah is awaiting orders from Khomeini.

“This is not just a cut in diplomatic ties but part of an international arrogant scheme by America and the Zionists against the spirit of Islam which has succeeded in confronting the Great Satan,” Hezbollah’s statement said.

Many Western experts believe that Hezbollah is behind the kidnaping of most of the foreigners who have been abducted and held hostage in Lebanon. Some of these experts also believe that Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad are part of the same organization or have other kinds of close ties beyond their repeatedly expressed sympathies for Khomeini.

At the center of the diplomatic storm is Wahid Gordji, listed by Iran as an interpreter at its Paris embassy but described by the French as a top intelligence officer in the Iranian mission.

The French say that Gordji lacks diplomatic status and therefore must submit to questioning, as requested, by a magistrate investigating a series of terrorist bombings that shook the French capital last year. The Iranian Embassy refused to let Gordji be questioned, and France posted police around the embassy building in Paris to keep Gordji from sneaking out of the country.

Charges and Countercharges

That action precipitated a series of charges, countercharges and physical incidents involving French and Iranian diplomats in Iran and in Europe, culminating in France’s announcement that it had severed relations with Tehran and Iran’s rupture with Paris shortly afterward.

Paris police kept the Iranian Embassy surrounded Saturday, checking all persons going in and out. IRNA, the Iranian news agency, said that the French Embassy in Tehran continues to be blockaded by police.

According to sources in the French External Relations Ministry, all French and Iranian diplomats must depart the respective countries by Wednesday under conditions of the diplomatic rupture, and on Saturday, the Italian government offered to represent France’s interests in Iran by moving its diplomats into the French Embassy building in the Iranian capital.

Iranian Interior Minister Mohtashemi’s announcement that French diplomats would be put on trial was made at a meeting with officials of so-called “revolutionary organizations,” according to IRNA, monitored here and in Paris.

Aided Escapees, Iran Says

Mohtashemi said that Iran has documents indicating that members of the French Embassy and consular staff acted as “a connecting bridge to help counterrevolutionaries escape abroad and also to link splinter groups inside Iran.”

“The spies will be arrested and handed over to the judiciary for Islamic justice,” Mohtashemi said, according to IRNA. He did not say how many would be tried, but he proclaimed that the Iranian people “will never allow a handful of people to commit crimes and espionage acts under the pretext of diplomacy.”

Even as a just gambit in the increasing war of nerves with France, Mohtashemi’s statement sounded eerily reminiscent of the propaganda that followed the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran in 1979, beginning a 444-day ordeal for 52 Americans.

Embassy Takeover Recalled

In Paris, some Iranian specialists warned that Tehran might take the 15 French citizens at the embassy as hostages, as happened to the Americans.

Christian Burguet, a Parisian lawyer who handles some Iranian interests in France, said that the French diplomats in Tehran run such a risk because official ties between the two nations have been broken.

Abolhassan Bani-Sadr, a former Iranian president who now lives in exile in France after falling out with Khomeini, speculated Saturday that Tehran may hold one or more French diplomats in Tehran until Gordji is allowed to leave France.

Other French authorities here expressed fear that an Iranian-incited terrorism campaign might be launched against Paris or other French cities in a repeat of last year’s random bombing attacks.

Kuwait Car Bomb

Here in Kuwait, meanwhile, a newspaper reported that two men who were killed trying to rig a car bomb in a fashionable shopping district of the city last week were intending to plant the bomb in the offices of Air France, the French airline.

The two were identified as Shia Muslims employed by the Kuwait Petroleum Co. and Kuwait Airlines, two of the largest companies in this small Persian Gulf sheikdom. French officials have been a past target of terrorists in Kuwait.

Charles P. Wallace reported from Kuwait and William Tuohy from Paris.