Arrest Warrant for Iranian in Bakhtiar Case Hinders Paris-Tehran Ties

France’s efforts to normalize relations with Iran received a setback when a magistrate investigating the August assassination in Paris of former Iranian Prime Minister Shahpour Bakhtiar issued an arrest warrant for an Iranian government official implicated in the case.

On Tuesday, Magistrate Jean-Louis Brugiere issued the warrant for the arrest of Hussein Sheikhattar as “an accomplice in murder and criminal conspiracy in connection with a terrorist action.” Sheikhattar, 42, was listed as an adviser to Iran’s minister of posts and telecommunications, Mohammed Qarazi.

The Iranian Embassy in Paris said Wednesday that it “vigorously denied, one more time, all implication of Iranian authorities” in Bakhtiar’s assassination Aug. 8.

French authorities have made two arrests in the killing of Bakhtiar, who was stabbed to death in his heavily guarded Paris home. However, the arrest warrant for Sheikhattar was the first time that an Iranian official had been directly linked to the crime.

Until the Bakhtiar killing, French President Francois Mitterrand had planned a fall trip to Tehran to repair damage caused by France’s long alliance with Iraq. Relations between the two countries had been strained since the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq War, in which France was a major backer of Iraq.

Officials at the French Foreign Ministry in Paris said Wednesday that Mitterrand’s trip is still “approved in principle” but that the Bakhtiar investigation has delayed it indefinitely.

“A trip like that should be taken in clear skies,” said one official.

Privately, French officials continue to blame fundamentalist Islamic factions inside the Iranian government for the killing. They insist that normalization efforts will continue.

“A renewal of relations between our two countries began about eight months ago,” said the official. “In that time, we have seen France grow from the 20th-largest trading partner with Iran to the fifth-largest partner.”

In recent months, French companies have been active in construction and automotive sales to Iran.

According to French investigators, Sheikhattar was linked to the Bakhtiar killing by disclosures from former Iranian TV journalist Massoud Hendi, 41. Hendi, arrested last month and identified by authorities as a grandnephew of the late Iranian revolutionary leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, is suspected of providing false passports to the three men suspected as Bakhtiar’s assassins.

One of the men, Ali Rad Vakili, was arrested in Geneva. The other two are still at large.