A former French counterterrorism judge has raised a question Western governments should have asked years ago: What did Iran’s rulers gain when Europe and the United States weakened an organized force opposed to them?
Marc Trevidic’s account matters because he speaks from experience inside the judicial system. Discussing France’s 2003 proceedings against members of the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran, or MEK, he recalled a period when Paris pursued valuable oil and gas agreements with Tehran while the Iranian authorities sought action against their opponents.
Trevidic later handled the case and dismissed the charges he examined. In remarks delivered in May 2026, he described the political use of counterterrorism justice. He also offered a strategic assessment: The MEK once possessed substantial military capabilities in Iran that, in his view, would be useful today in bringing down the regime. France, the U.S., and Britain, he said, had all played a part in eliminating those capabilities.
His testimony connects two questions usually discussed separately: whether restrictions on an opposition organization were justified, and how those restrictions affected the government it opposed.
An organization need not be certain of overthrowing a government to influence its behavior. Its existence can force that government to allocate forces, protect vulnerable positions, and consider the possibility of organized resistance. Removing such a challenge changes the calculation, even when no one can predict the outcome of the alternative.
That is the strategic dimension missing from much of the debate about the MEK’s disarmament in Iraq.
In 2003, American forces overthrew Saddam Hussein and collected the MEK’s weapons and heavy equipment. Saddam was Tehran’s long-standing state adversary. The MEK was an Iranian opposition force operating from Iraqi territory. The two were distinct obstacles, and Washington removed them for different reasons. Nevertheless, Tehran emerged with neither confronting it across its western border.
The invasion did not automatically deliver Iraq to Iran. The collapse of Iraqi institutions, the choices of postwar leaders, and Tehran’s own investment in political and armed networks all mattered. But the Islamic Republic operated in an environment from which two important constraints had disappeared.
The history of Western restrictions on the MEK reveals how that environment developed.
In 1997, the Clinton administration placed the group on the American list of foreign terrorist organizations. The Los Angeles Times reported that a senior administration official described its inclusion as a goodwill gesture toward Iran’s newly elected president, Mohammad Khatami. The European Union imposed restrictions in 2002.
The official’s explanation exposed a consequential diplomatic assumption: Limiting an opposition movement could help improve relations with the government it challenged. The immediate benefit was easier to imagine than the longer-term cost.
Trevidic’s account of the French proceedings supplies a European parallel. If diplomatic and commercial interests helped shape action against Tehran’s opponents, the resulting decisions must be assessed beyond the negotiations they were intended to facilitate. Judicial independence was at stake, but so was the balance of pressure on the Iranian regime.
The intelligence failures preceding the Iraq invasion belong in this examination, too.
A Senate Intelligence Committee investigation found that false information from sources affiliated with Ahmed Chalabi’s Iraqi National Congress had supported important prewar assessments concerning Iraq’s alleged weapons programs. In June 2004, Los Angeles Times columnist Tim Rutten discussed allegations that Chalabi had passed sensitive American information to Iran, which Chalabi denied, and speculation that he might have been an Iranian double agent.
Those suspicions did not establish that Tehran orchestrated the deception. The Senate investigation did not demonstrate Iranian direction of Chalabi’s network. The strategic argument rests on the consequences of the decisions, rather than on an unproven explanation of who engineered them.
Those consequences also invite a question about repression inside Iran. A government facing fewer organized challenges has greater flexibility in deploying its security apparatus. Would retaining the MEK’s former capabilities have made Tehran more cautious during subsequent domestic uprisings? No historical record can give a definitive answer. Trevidic’s assessment nevertheless makes dismissing the question difficult.
The practical lesson for Washington is to assess opposition policy as part of Iran policy.
THE ULTIMATE THREAT TO TEHRAN ISN’T TRUMP OR ISRAEL. IT’S THE PRICE OF BREAD
Allegations against any organization require evidence and scrutiny of specific conduct. Tehran’s demand that an opponent be restricted should also prompt an examination of the advantage the Iranian authorities expect to obtain. A concession affecting an opposition movement can alter the regime’s calculations long after a diplomatic opening has closed.
Washington does not have to endorse every claim made by Iran’s opponents to recognize their strategic significance. It has to understand the consequences of its own decisions. Trevidic’s testimony offers an opportunity to examine a neglected part of that record before diplomatic convenience again obscures a lasting cost.
Hamid Enayat is an Iranian writer and political analyst based in Paris.
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[ H/T Washington Examiner ]
