In a post on his Twitter page on Wednesday, Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Abbas Mousavi dismissed President Emmanuelle Macron’s call for Tehran to free two jailed French nationals.

“The French should not forget that Iran is a sovereign state. Neither our government nor the judiciary will take any advice from anyone,” Mousavi said on Wednesday. Addressing France he added, “any interference in Iran domestic matters and affairs is unacceptable to us.”

On Tuesday, Macron said the imprisonment of two French nationals in Iran was unbearable and demanded their immediate release

“On Human Rights Day, my thoughts go to Fariba Adelkhah and Roland Marchal, our compatriots held in Iran, and their families,” Macron said on Twitter.

“Their imprisonment is intolerable. They must be freed without delay. I told President Rouhani, I repeat it here,” he wrote.

Adelkhah, a 60-year-old anthropologist and researcher at Sciences Po’s Center for International Studies (CERI) in Paris, and her colleague Marchal were arrested in Iran in June on espionage charge.

In October, Mousavi said that Iran’s national law does not recognize the dual citizenship of Iranian citizens, and thus Adelkhah is regarded as an Iranian national.

He, however, said that as an Iranian national, she enjoys full citizenship rights, adding that the Iranian Judiciary is carefully pursuing her case within the framework of the country’s fair trial law.

Macron’s appeal followed a prisoner swap at the weekend between Iran and the United States.

Iranian stem cell scientist Masoud Soleimani, who had been held in the US for allegedly breaching sanctions, was released by the US on Saturday in exchange for Xiyue Wang — a Chinese-born US citizen who had been sentenced to 10 years in prison for espionage in Iran in 2017.

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Attending the nationwide meeting of the provinces’ alleged committees, Hossein Zolfaqari said, “This issue is neither a theoretical matter nor a maneuver, but it is a strategy under which we must really get ready to counter any conditions.”

Zolfaqari, who serves as head of the Interior Ministry’s passive defense committee, went on to say that “we must pay serious attention to passive defense to continue rendering services to needy people and to handle the society’s affairs in any condition.”

Last week, the commander of the Passive Defense Organization said that no serious military threat against Iran existed at the moment.

“As the leader of the (Islamic) Revolution said, ‘the option of war is the final threat which has been thwarted by Iran’s defense power’,” said Brigadier General Gholamreza Jalali during a press conference.

Jalali said, “A new wave of threats in non-military fields has been launched by the United States, first of which is the economic war.”

“The first mission of the Passive Defense Organization is to watch out for threats, identify them and issue warnings in different fields.”

“The second mission of the organization is to decrease the vulnerability of the country’s infrastructure against national threats,” he remarked.

The commander went on to say, “The Islamic Republic is carrying out measures to strengthen its infrastructure against any type of threats.”

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