Eurodif SA's customers included EDF and over 30 electricity companies worldwide, and its main competitors were the United States and Russia.

[2] The members of this association, which has a statutory lifespan of just two years, are France, Belgium, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, and the Federal Republic of Germany.

[3] On November 22, 1973, the French government approved the project to build the Eurodif isotope separation plant, with a capacity of 9 million SWU.

[10] Reza Shah Pahlavi lent one billion US dollars[1] following an agreement signed in December 1974, during Prime Minister Jacques Chirac's official trip to Teheran, and providing for Iran's entry into Eurodif,[11] then a further 180 million USD in 1977 for the construction of the Eurodif plan to have the right to purchase 10% of the site's enriched uranium production.

Initially supported by France and the United States, whose sole aim was to topple the Shah, Iran's leaders soon turned against Paris and Washington.

[11] In 1981, following the commissioning of the Eurodif plant, Iran demanded 10% of the enriched uranium production to which it was contractually entitled, which France refused.

From 1981 to 1991, the mullahs' regime was suspected of carrying out several assassinations, hostage-takings, and murderous attacks: probably hundreds of French people paid with their lives before France and Iran settled the Eurodif dispute.

[14] On November 17, 1986, after several deadly attacks in Paris, attributed (for those in September) to the LARF (led by Georges Ibrahim Abdallah)[15] and the kidnapping of French journalists (Jean-Paul Kauffmann, Michel Seurat, etc.)

[17] According to Dominique Lorentz, who relies in particular on Roland Jacquard, Action Directe, which accepted responsibility for Besse's assassination, was linked to FARL [ref.

This information, which comes from the French anti-terrorist intelligence services, is questioned by others, who point to the paradox of an autonomous, Marxist-Leninist-inspired group supporting the "mullahs' regime".

Reza Amrollahi, Deputy Prime Minister and President of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, visited the Eurodif plant in France in December 1986, proposing the resumption of nuclear cooperation, but no agreement was signed.

Recalling Lorentz's investigation, Le Dauphiné libéré wrote: "Diplomats Marcel Carton and Marcel Fontaine, journalist Jean-Paul Kauffman held hostage for over 3 years in Lebanon, the murderous attacks on Fnac and the Renault Pub, the assassination of Georges Besse, head of the French nuclear industry and hostile to negotiations with Iran, and many others, paid the price of the Eurodif dispute in the 1980s.

[21] Finally, an agreement was reached in 1991, some points of which remain secret:[11] France repaid more than 1.6 billion dollars while Eurodif was compensated for orders canceled by Iran.

[24] Eurodif's closure and dismantling date was the subject of difficult negotiations between EDF and Areva, for which former French Prime Minister François Fillon called for a rapid agreement.

[28] According to the network sortir du nucléaire, dismantling the plant will entail a risk for workers, as well as an increase in discharges from the facility.

[30] The plant, named Georges Besse in 1988 after the first chairman of Eurodif Production's management board, was a nuclear facility specializing in the isotopic separation of uranium by gaseous diffusion.

It supplied enriched uranium to some forty electricity producers around the world, including Électricité de France, representing some one hundred nuclear reactors.