France Cuts Relations With Iran : Lebanese Group Threatens to Kill 2 Hostages in Return

France severed diplomatic ties with Iran Friday after an acrimonious, 18-day standoff marked by charges of spying and links to terrorist bombings. A terrorist group in Lebanon threatened to kill two French hostages in retaliation.

The formal break came one day after Tehran threatened to sever links in a dispute that erupted when France sent police to the Iranian Embassy last month to question an Iranian holed up there about terrorism. The man still is wanted for questioning, despite the break in relations, government officials said.

“France has decided to break, for now, diplomatic relations with Iran,” said a statement by the French government. “This has not been an easy decision . . . but we could not ignore Iran’s ultimatum on Thursday to break off ties within 72 hours.”

After the break, France said Iranian security forces cordoned off the French Embassy in Tehran and Paris tightened a blockade of the Iranian Embassy near the Eiffel Tower.

‘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.

The situation raised fears of a possible repeat of the U.S. Embassy crisis of 1979, when extremists seized the American mission and took hostages.

“What can happen now is that people in Iran, the crowds, learning of the break in diplomatic relations, could do something like what happened to the Americans--in other words, a real invasion of the embassy,” said Christian Bourguet, a lawyer representing the interests of Iranian leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in France.

He said it would be difficult to halt a “huge, monstrous demonstration at the embassy.”

15 People in Embassy

A French spokesman said there were 15 staff members, 10 with diplomatic status, in the embassy in Tehran, including a diplomat Iran insists on questioning about alleged espionage links. There are five Iranians with diplomatic status in Paris along with 40 administrative personnel. The spokesman said both nations agreed that the embassy personnel would “pack and leave within five days.”

From Tehran, the official news agency said Iran had broken relations with France because the country had mistreated its diplomats and surrounded Iran’s Embassy with police.

Several hours after France announced that it was breaking ties, two Western news agencies and a radio station in Beirut received anonymous telephone calls saying the pro-Iranian Islamic Jihad organization had decided to “immediately execute” hostages Marcel Fontaine and Marcel Carton in retaliation.

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

March Kidnapings

Fontaine, 45, vice consul at the French Embassy in Beirut, and Carton, 62, chief of protocol, were kidnaped March 22, 1985.

In addition, four other French citizens believed kidnaped by pro-Iranian extremists are missing, including Michel Seurat, a researcher the Islamic Jihad claimed said was killed last year in retaliation for French bias toward Iraq. Six Americans also are captives in Lebanon.

The French government, hoping to influence Iran to seek release of French hostages in Lebanon, last year launched efforts to normalize relations with Tehran.

But a confrontation erupted June 30 when Paris police began stopping people entering and leaving the Iranian Embassy in an attempt to question Wahid Gordji, an Iranian interpreter who had taken refuge inside the Iranian mission. Gordji, wanted for questioning about terrorist bombings that killed 11 people in France last year, does not have diplomatic status and is believed to be a top Iranian secret agent.

Embassy Circled

Iran responded by circling the French Embassy in Tehran, accusing French Consul Jean-Paul Torri of espionage and refusing to allow several French personnel to leave Iran. IRNA reported Friday that Torri still “is bound to appear before the Islamic Revolution court to answer some questions.”

Tensions heightened in recent days when Tehran accused French border guards of beating an Iranian diplomat trying to enter France from Switzerland and demanded that the guards be punished.

A statement from Prime Minister Jacques Chirac’s office called Tehran’s demands “unacceptable conditions.”

“France takes note of this situation, and considering the process of the rupture of diplomatic relations having been engaged, the unavoidable consequences have to be carried out,” he said.

‘They Are All Fine’

A government spokesman said French personnel in France “were in touch with us today and they are handling this thing with courage and calm. They are all fine.”

In Tehran, Parliament Speaker Hashemi Rafsanjani said France “is standing by the United States” in a crisis that Washington was “trying to create” in the Persian Gulf. The United States this week plans to begin escorting Kuwaiti tankers in the gulf because of strikes on shipping by Iran and Iraq, foes in a nearly 7-year-old war.

“We do not consider the war of the embassies to be separate from the Persian Gulf war,” he said. The French media has described the French-Iranian dispute as “the war of the embassies.”

France, the eighth country involved in a break of diplomatic relations with Iran since Khomeini took power in 1979, also is a major arms supplier to Iraq.

The United States broke relations in 1980 over the seizure of the U.S. Embassy in Tehran.