Can the current war between Israel and Iran have consequences in France? In the past, Iranians have already tried to commit attacks in our country. What do we know about a possible threat?
Could France be a target of the mullahs regime? Ten days after the start of the war between Israel and Iran – and in which France does not intervene militarily – the question can legitimately arise. In the 80s and 90s, Iran had terrorist networks in the West.
For security, the Ministry of the Interior asked, as of June 13, from the prefects and bosses of police and gendarmerie services to bring “particular vigilance” to the potential targets which could be targeted by “acts of terrorism or maliciousness by a foreign power”: places of worship, schools, nuclear power plants, Jewish community or American interests.
A violent action thwarted in 2018
Bruno Retailleau identified two types of threats which he had detailed on Europe 1, June 18. The first is a threat from an enemy living in France. “The Islamist movement can wake up in favor of these events with in particular young people who are radicaling on social networks”. At the beginning of December 2023, a 26-year-old Franco-Iranian who was said and known for his radical Islamism had killed a German tourist and injured two people in Paris near the Eiffel Tower.
The second concerns “the regime of ayatollahs and mullahs that have tried to commit attacks on French soil”. This was the case in 2018. A bomb attack project aimed at a large gathering of opponents of the Iranian regime, at Villepinte en Seine Saint-Denis, could have been thwarted 48 hours before.
Currently, the Iranian community represents approximately 62,000 people in France, mainly opponents members of the OMPI (Organization of Mujahidines of the Iranian people).
A targeted assassinations practice
A note from the DGSI of May 2024, revealed by the France-Presse agency, indicates that, since 2015, “Iranian services have returned to a practice of targeted assassinations which had not been observed in Europe for twenty years”. Their objective would be to “strike civilian targets” to “increase the feeling of insecurity within the opposition” to the Tehran regime and within “the Jewish and/or Israeli community”.
The expert of terrorism Claude Moniquet, questioned by Atlanticrecalls that the Iranian regime has never stopped using the terrorist weapon. Terrorist networks have been dismantled in recent years in Germany, Scandinavia or the Balkans.
Since the beginning of the war between Israel and Iran, Emmanuel Macron has been having been having to maintain dialogue with the Iranian president, Masoud Pezeshkian. He called it “to de-escalation, the exercise of the greatest restraint”, this weekend, while not forgetting that two French hostages, Cécile Kohler and Jacques Paris, remain detained in Iran since 2022.
