By Professor Lord David Alton of Liverpool
The Hill – September 29, 2014 – It was reported last Wednesday that nine activist members of the Iranian resistance, the People’s Mojahedin Organization of Iran (PMOI/MEK) were cleared of charges that, for eleven years, had been pending in French courts.
The verdict is the end to a decade-long ordeal that the Iranian opposition and its political umbrella group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) have been forced to endure. Perhaps it will finally signal the end of international speculation about the group’s legitimacy.
The Court determined that there was no evidence to support charges of terrorism or financial misconduct against either the nine individuals or any other members of Iranian opposition. Equally important, in handing down the order of dismissal, the French investigative judge took the unprecedented step of affirming the group’s right to resist tyrannical rule and political repression in its native Iran.
Although unprecedented, this was the only logical decision open to the French Judiciary. Without such a declaration it would have remained “open season” for the campaign of demonization against the moderate and democratic NCRI while ignoring the well-documented, brutal crimes of the theocratic regime in Iran.
It is simply futile to endlessly appease a fundamentalist theocracy – as many Western nations have been doing in recent years.
 Winston Churchill memorably described the character of an appeaser “as one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.”  Feeding crocodiles is always dangerous and the West should tread with great care.
The French judiciary’s decision does not stand alone. The false portrait painted by the regime of those who oppose them has been systematically, successfully, challenged in one Western nation after another.
Putting the issue of their legitimacy to rest, once and for all, not only gives the NCRI an international mandate to persist in its opposition to the Iranian regime; it  could also encourage and provide a similar mandate to all moderate opposition group that challenge the extremism which is still far too prevalent throughout the Middle East.
Be clear, the vindication of the NCRI is a blow to the Iranian regime.
And it is not the only blow they have received this week. The decision of the United States Congress to pass a Bill authorizing a plan to train and arm moderate rebel groups in Syria is another harbinger of a more realistic, coherent, approach to the region.  Those who worryingly speculated that President Obama might seek an alliance with the Iranian regime to fight Islamic State can, for the moment at least, breathe a tentative sigh of relief.
Such cooperation would risk exacerbating  sectarian conflict in the region, not only by further legitimizing the Shiite theocracy in Iran, but also by helping to suppress the moderate Muslim groups that the West has, instead, elected to support.
While the U.S. was working to build a coalition to fight the Sunni extremists of the Islamic State, the crocodiles among Iran’s leaders made it perfectly clear that Iran’s support for that coalition would be contingent upon America and its allies accepting the brutal, repressive Syrian dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad. To placate him the West would be required to acquiesce as he finally crushes the moderate rebellion before turning his full attention to the Islamic State.
Accepting such an ultimatum would have been disastrous to Western interests in the region, to say nothing of the abnegation of Western values – including respect for human rights and the rule of law. But the voices in favor of appeasing and co-operating with Iran were so insistent that there seemed to be genuine danger of the U.S. and its partners acceding to Iran’s ultimatum.
Einstein defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. It would come close to diplomatic insanity for the West to once again accommodate an Iranian ultimatum – as we have in the past. The results will be the same.
The same distorted thinking led to several western governments, eager to have better relations with Iran, becoming complicit in the now-discredited attacks on the moderate opposition of the NCRI. Moderate Muslim opposition movements in the Middle East should take the international community’s determination not to be duped again as evidence that they will now have a partner on the world stage.
The West cannot afford to stop here if its objective is to degrade and destroy extremism.
It must actively defend the NCRI, the Free Syrian Army, the Kurdish Peshmerga and other moderate voices and forces in the Middle East. It is the only viable long-term strategy in the region. The choice has always been between defending moderate Muslims, even when they are not in power in Middle East, or in cooperating with extremists simply because they have a government behind them.
Too often, the U.S., the UK, and others, have chosen the latter option – leading to any number of unintended consequences. But if, instead of appeasing and feeding the crocodiles, they form genuine alliances with moderate, democratic and secular organization, they will surely find that there is more than enough manpower to overcome the barbaric atrocities that continue to plague and threaten the stability in the Middle East.

Alton is a Crossbench Independent member of the British House of Lords and a member of the British Parliamentary Committee for a free Iran