When Iranian President Hassan Rouhani travels to Japan on Dec. 19-20, he will be looking to Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe to try to advance possible US-Iran mediation efforts, as French efforts appear to have stalled amid rising European concern about Iran’s steps away from the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Iran “is asking Abe to pick up where [French President Emmanuel] Macron left off,” Ali Vaez, Iran director at the International Crisis Group, told Al-Monitor.

For Rouhani, the invitation to Japan may offer the chance to signal not just internationally but also to the domestic Iranian audience that there could be a reprieve from economic duress that has spurred recent widespread protests and a bloody crackdown that killed over 200 people.

“What Rouhani needs to show is, absent any head of state to head of state engagement with the Europeans, that there still a different channel to use to try and find a framework for de-escalation,” Esfandyar Batmanghelidj, founder of the Bourse & Bazaar website about Iranian international economic engagement,  told Al-Monitor. “The Japanese put themselves forward.”