France took on Tuesday a number of measures against Iran, after officially accusing the country’s intelligence ministry of standing behind a June plot to attack an exiled opposition group’s rally outside Paris. The French government seized the assets of Iran’s intelligence services and Iranian diplomat Assadollah Asadi and deputy minister and director general of intelligence Saeid Hashemi Moghadam. France had warned Tehran to expect a robust response after Asadi was arrested in Germany suspected of involvement in a plot to bomb the meeting of the Paris-based National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI). The French measures revealed that Paris is certain about Iran’s involvement in the plot. “Behind all this was a long, meticulous and detailed investigation by our (intelligence) services that enabled us to reach the conclusion, without any doubt, that responsibility fell on the Iranian intelligence ministry,” a French diplomatic source said, according to Reuters. The source added that Moghadam had ordered the attack and Asadi had put it into action. Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Bahram Qasemi was quoted as saying by state news agency IRNA: “We deny once again the allegations against Iran and demand the immediate release of the Iranian diplomat.” The incident was a plot “designed by those who want to damage Iran’s long-established relations with France and Europe,” he said. In a news briefing in Washington, US State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert noted the French action and said it was evidence that “there’s probably no one who has felt terrorism stemming from Iran perhaps more than - well, the Syrians - that has felt it more than some Europeans.” Sources close to file of the French-Iranian relations told Asharq Al-Awsat there are two possibilities behind the French accusations. “Either Tehran had presented materials considered by France as not sufficient to clear Iran from the charge of plotting the June attack or France might have possessed enough evidence to refute the Iranian arguments.” The French Le Monde newspaper wrote on Tuesday that Iranian President Hassan Rouhani failed to present to his French counterpart information he had promised to offer concerning the issue. Ten days ago, Asharq Al-Awsat asked a source close to French President Emmanuel Macron about French-Iranian relations following the June plot, especially after Paris suspended nominating a new ambassador to Iran and did not respond to Tehran’s nomination of diplomatic positions in France. The sources said there is no direct link between the June incident and the absence of a French envoy in Tehran. “Tehran promised to offer objective material about the incident, in a way that allow us to continue our diplomatic relations, as in the past,” the sources said. Tehran already suffers from bad relations with the US after Washington pulled out from the 2015 nuclear deal and re-imposed tough sanctions on Iran. High-ranking diplomatic sources told Asharq Al-Awsat that Tehran is not in a position to issue warnings to France and other European states that signed the deal.