On Monday, Iran’s foreign ministry issued an official travel advisory urging all Iranian citizens to cancel non-essential trips to France, Belgium and Italy, citing a sharp escalation of civil unrest and breakdowns in public order across the three European nations. The guidance goes further, asking Iranians already residing or traveling in the three countries to steer clear of tense protest hotspots and avoid all unnecessary movement through unstable areas.
The unrest prompting the advisory is most severe in France, where escalating mass protests driven in part by a deepening cost-of-living crisis have rocked cities across the country. As of the latest updates, the unrest has left at least two civilians dead, more than 2,000 people arrested by police, and multiple protesters with severe injuries – including two individuals who lost hands after being hit by police stun grenades. In one high-profile incident reported by Reuters, a 14-year-old boy named Eden suffered a broken jaw and shattered teeth after a police tear gas projectile struck him in the face in a Paris suburb.
French authorities in multiple major cities have already imposed formal bans on new demonstrations, and the national government has declined to rule out declaring a national state of emergency, a move that would grant law enforcement expanded powers to conduct searches and carry out arrests without standard judicial oversight. Human rights organization Amnesty International has publicly condemned French police for deploying unnecessary and excessive force against demonstrators, a large share of whom are high school and university students. Anne Savinel-Barras, head of Amnesty International France, emphasized that children and young people engaging in peaceful protest to demand their right to education deserve protection, not beatings, tear gas exposure, or arbitrary detention.
The travel advisory comes as Iranian officials have launched a blistering public rebuke of French President Emmanuel Macron over his foreign policy alignment. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi criticized Macron on social media platform X for siding with what the statement called the Israeli-U.S. campaign against Iran. “Macron made his bed when he assured POTUS that he welcomes atrocities against Iranians,” Araghchi wrote Monday. “Too late to blame the war his ilk helped cause. The French people demand wholesale change, including freedom of assembly. Listen to the future of France, Mr President.”
The criticism from Tehran centers on what Iran calls clear double standards from the French government when it comes to the right to protest. In comments made on October 6, Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baghaei called out Paris for its divergent reactions to demonstrations in Iran versus its own territory. Back in January 2026, Baghaei noted, France publicly called for the Iranian government to respect peaceful assembly and exercise restraint in the face of mass street protests in Iran, even as Paris labeled current student-led demonstrations in France “urban violence.”
Baghaei pointed out that France’s interior minister has rejected calls for restraint, instead demanding security forces deploy swift, decisive force to crack down on unrest and restore public order. “Why are the same behaviors and the same standards interpreted one way when the protester is in Iran and another way when the protester is in France?” he asked.
This public rebuke from Iran puts a spotlight on the contradiction inherent in France’s public position: Paris has openly supported mass protests in Iran while harshly cracking down on demonstrations in its own borders. The irony is underscored by the Iranian government’s own response to January 2026 protests in the country: independent reports confirm thousands of protesters were killed in a brutal security force crackdown that saw live ammunition fired into crowds and thousands more detained. Amnesty International noted at the time that even against Iran’s long record of severe human rights violations during protest waves, the scale and severity of the January 2026 crackdown was unprecedented.
In response to Iran’s criticism, Paris escalated the diplomatic conflict on October 7, when French Foreign Minister Jean-Noel Barrot summoned Iran’s ambassador to France to protest what Paris calls a “disinformation campaign carried out by the Iranian authorities regarding the high school student movement in France.” The ongoing exchange marks a sharp deterioration in already strained bilateral ties between the two nations, amplified by the overlapping crises of European domestic unrest and Middle Eastern geopolitical tensions.