France said on Friday that the imprisonment of two prominent French academics by Iran was unacceptable and that their release would represent a "significant gesture.”
"These arrests and the fact that they are in prison today is totally unacceptable," French Foreign Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian told RTL radio about Fariba Adelkhah and Roland Marchal.
"It would be a significant gesture if Iran freed them as soon as possible."
Iran has dropped espionage charges against Adelkhah but she still faces charges of spreading "propaganda against the political system" and "conspiracy against national security", her lawyer said this week.
Iran does not recognize Adelkhah's dual French-Iranian nationality and has lashed out at Paris for what it has described as "interference" in the cases of the academics, both from Sciences Po university in Paris.
Marchal is also accused of "collusion against national security", according to his lawyer.
The two researchers are not the only foreign academics behind bars in Iran -- Australian Kylie Moore-Gilbert of the University of Melbourne is serving a 10-year sentence on espionage charges.
Sciences Po said late last year that Adelkhah and Moore-Gilbert had begun a hunger strike. Moore-Gilbert has issued a plea to Prime Minister Scott Morrison to work for her release.
Tehran is still holding several other foreigners in high-profile cases, including British-Iranian mother Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Iranian-American businessman Siamak Namazi and his father, Mohammad Bagher Namazi.
Le Drian also said on Friday that Iran could have nuclear weapons in one to two years if the country carries on violating the nuclear accord.
France, Britain and Germany are scrambling to keep alive the 2015 deal that reined in Tehran's nuclear program, which US President Donald Trump walked out of in 2018.
