Reporting "Asre Khodro", Iran Khodro Managing Director Hashem Yekke-Zareh has told the domestic media that experts from Peugeot are in Iran and are talking business with SAPCO – a subsidiary of Iran Khodro that specializes in providing auto parts.

On a related front, Iran’s Fars News Agency has reported that about a dozen Peugeot experts have already been stationed at SAPCO.

Fars has further emphasized that the move is a prelude to the upcoming visit to Tehran by French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius.

The French minister, who is expected in Tehran on Wednesday, has said the trip will be taking place at the invitation of his Iranian counterpart Mohammad Javad Zarif.

He has emphasized in an op-ed published in Iran newspaper that new horizons have opened for Iran and France to promote their economic cooperation in light of the recent breakthrough in Vienna over the Iranian nuclear energy program.  

Nevertheless, the return to Iran of French enterprises – specifically Peugeot – will not be free from challenges.

Fars has criticized the company for “leaving Iran overnight” when the US-engineered sanctions against the country intensified in 2011.

“Fabius will be traveling to Tehran to look for a way to compensate the losses that French auto makers have suffered after losing the Iranian market,” Fars wrote in its report.  

“This is while the damages that France has inflicted on the Iranian economy [as a result of the departure of Peugeot and other companies] are yet to be determined.”