Examining the Effect of Sanctions on the Trade Relationship between Iran and France

Iran plays an important role in West Asia due to its abundant natural resources, especially oil. Also, considering the economic importance of France as one of the powers of the European Union, trade relations with this European country in various dimensions, such as employment, security, and expertise in production. This study aims to investigate the trade relationship between Iran and France in the two cases of the existence of sanctions and without sanctions in the period 1979 to 2020. For this purpose, with an emphasis on the law of gravity, we investigated the factors affecting the bilateral trade between Iran and France. The results of the Johannsen’s Cointegration Test confirmed the existence of a long term equilibrium relationship between the variables of the model in the presence or absence of sanctions in Iran's economy. The results of estimation the model using the Ordinary Least Squares method (OLS) showed that the GDP of both Iran and France has a positive and statistically significant relationship with bilateral exports between the two countries. Also, the population of France has a direct effect, and the population of Iran has a reverse effect on bilateral exports; Althought population growth is important in international trade, it seems that these effects have not been very significant. Also, the estimation results of the model in the presence of sanctions showed an inverse effect of sanctions on the growth of two countries' exports to each other, confirmed in the long term. The presence of sanctions reduces the exports of Iran and France to each other by 0.0133%.