As France dispatches fighter jets and warships to defend its Gulf partners amid US and Israeli strikes on Iran, Paris also faces a more elusive front – on its own soil. Middle East expert Adrian Calamel tells RFI that France remains vulnerable not only to Tehran’s clandestine networks but also to rival Iranian exiles, whose political influence campaigns echo across Europe.
Calamel is co-author of the 2025 report “Infiltration into France of the Islamic Republic of Iran: Spies, Agents of Influence, Thugs – The Mechanics of Chaos”, commissioned by right-wing local politician Gilles Platret and his think tank France 2050.
RFI: French President Emmanuel Macron has condemned the escalation but also offered aid to Middle East partners, including deploying France's only nuclear-powered aircraft carrier. How exposed is France to Iranian retaliation?
AC: I think France is always going to be vulnerable. One of the reasons why Macron is moving the aircraft carrier to the region is because he's concerned a lot about Lebanon, because they are a front in this war. He does not want to see a ground invasion by Israel, although I don't expect to see that.
As far as retaliation against [French] bases, if you are in anyway seen as helping the United States or Israel, the [Iranian] regime will target you around the region. This is a concern for France, not just in the region, but also in the homeland.
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France has a history with this. Look at the bombing campaigns in the summer of 1986, a Hezbollah campaign aimed at influencing French politics... These are examples that France has to be concerned about.
[Between December 1985 and September 1986, a group demanding the release of prisoners in the Middle East bombed 11 targets in Paris including train stations, department stores and the Champs-Elysées, and made a failed attempt at the Eiffel Tower. French counter-terrorism investigators concluded that operatives from Hezbollah, backed by Iran, were responsible.]
RFI: Looking ahead, what countermeasures could French policymakers adopt against Iran's cultural and diplomatic networks in France?
AC: When France starts to see the regime implode and start to collapse, France has to look at not just NGOs, but organisations, appendages of the regime that have been operating in France since before the revolution.
Because [founder of the Islamic Republic] Ruhollah Khomeini had these networks alive and well in France pre-1979, and now they've matured over the years. And so the concern is, if the regime falls, how are these entities that are operating in France and that have been for decades going to react? What's going to happen with them? And France should really start examining them and looking to shut them down.
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France is always going to be vulnerable.
REMARK by Adrian Calamel
RFI: Apart from pro-regime groups, France is also home to Iranian opposition figures – notably the People's Mujahideen (MEK), which is based not far from Paris and led by a woman, Maryam Rajavi. They were the ones that alerted the world about Iran’s nuclear weapons programme back in 2002. What are their chances of taking power in Iran if the current regime falls?
AC: To put it in simple terms, they are a Marxist-Islamist organisation. But there's a lot of mystery around the MEK. At one point they were on the US's foreign terrorist organization list.
They've got no support inside Iran, and they've got very little support outside. The way they are able to magnify their voice, leverage their situation, is by paying politicians to support them – for instance Mike Pompeo, John Bolton, Rudy Giuliani. They are all collecting pay cheques from them every time they show up to speak.
The one thing that could unite regime people and anti-regime people is their hatred for the MEK, because they are seen as terrorists. They've killed innocent Iranians. They sought an alliance with [Iraqi dictator and Iran’s arch enemy] Saddam Hussein. That continues to be held over them.
And their intelligence exposing the nuclear programme: most suspect that that intelligence was passed to them by the Israelis. It was not MEK on the ground, because the MEK networks inside Iran have been wiped out.
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That's why they're so dominant in Brussels, why they have such a big representation in Washington, because they are constantly trying to influence politicians.
So that when the regime does fall, they envision that they can fill the vacuum. And they're trying to get policymakers who should know better to say that they've got a really good plan and they're the best future for Iran. But really, it would be: "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss." It's just going to be a woman this time, instead of a man.
