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> Born Nov. 22, 1969, in Rasht, Iran, and grew up in Tehran. Sent to live in Austria at 14 during the Iran-Iraq war. Returned to Iran after her high school years and attended art school in Tehran.

> Left Iran for Europe again at 24 and continued her art studies in Strasbourg, France.

> Now lives in Paris as a French citizen. Since publishing "Persepolis," has not been back to Iran.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/0...

There were two large exile groups subsequent to the Iranian revolution: France and Albania. MEK has a large presence in both. I don't know enough of the history to say whether France was chosen because there was _already_ an affinity or not, but interestingly "merci" is one of the common ways to say "thank you" in Persian.
There was (might still be) a large Iranian population in Los Angeles. Enough to have a Farsi language UHF station and for the city to get a nickname of Tehrangeles.
The Vienna group was bigger. That's why she was sent to Vienna. Esp. the ex aristocrats and generals are all living in Vienna. Only the religious nutheads in Paris.
That she's French-Iranian?

It says so right in the title so I may have misunderstood your question.

Wondering why Iran has so many connections with France which AFAIK never really colonised the place.
Good question. I think maybe it was because a good deal of academics from the Islamic world were educated in France already due to the colonies they did have. Algerians, Tunisians, Syrians, Moroccans, Lebanese... Not an expert so could totally be wrong here, but maybe France put in more effort to incorporate local elites into their own bureaucratic elite system? I imagine there were probably more Muslims in the grande ecoles in France in the 50-60s than in the English elite schools (or US ones for that matter).

Also, I know France practiced (and probably still practices) a good deal of academic "cultural outreach", promoting their culture and especially their language abroad.

I guess kind of like Gabriel Garcia and Mexico, though I don't think Columbians would like anyone to describe him as having been Mexican (ex as Mexican-Columbian) in any way though he lived there for the majority of his life and had become very well integrated into the elite circles of Mexico city -that said, he never renounced his Columbian citizenship and I think he also considered himself Columbian and not Mexican --which makes sense, he was not born there and none of his parents were from there.
Nitpick: it's Colombia, not Columbia. And the last name is Garcia Marquez. Splitting half of the last name is not generally done. It sounds like calling somebody called McDonald just Mac.
Just expanding on this. In hispanic countries we have two last names. One you get from your father side and the other one you get from the mother side. When the first last name is very common like Lopez, Garcia, Perez, etc. it is common practice to keep the second last name when you are talking about them. Otherwise it sounds too plain. Like Gabriel Garcia could be anyone, but Gabriel Garcia Marquez is a renown author.
France was historically very interested in the Near and Middle East, though colonially somewhat less successful than the UK; Napoleon sailed to Egypt in 1799, and later the French Republic protected Lebanese and Syrian Christians, up to some point in history. People from the Levant still like to study in France (incl. Nassim Nicholas Taleb). Hence, France is considered a strong and culturally developed country in the region.

And unlike the UK and US, they had no historic bad blood with Iran (Mossadegh et al.)

And French is still language of educated class in some places in Levant, esp. Liban.
When I lived in Tehran in the late '70s people said "merci" to express thanks.
They still do.
Yes, it's kind of the standard word for it in Iranian Persian
Armenia as well
yup. shnorhakalutyun is a bit of mouthful :)
ճիշտ ես!
A more recent influence came from the Sykes-Picot Agreement [1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sykes%E2%80%93Picot_Agreement

Yes, but there are more. For example, French engineers built the Suez Canal.
Downvoted for asking questions. Nice.