A federal judge in Washington is ordering Iran to pay $12 million for the emotional distress incurred by the wife of a prominent Iranian dissident assassinated in France in an operation investigators there blamed on the Iranian government.

Judge Henry Kennedy ordered the award yesterday in a lawsuit brought by Shahintaj Bakhtiar, who now lives in California and was married to Chapour Bakhtiar when he was stabbed to death and mutilated at his Paris home in 1991.

Iran did not defend itself against the lawsuit, but the judge held a brief trial to establish facts in the case last year.

Bakhtiar was a longtime critic of the Shah’s regime who briefly served as prime minister in Iran before the Shah was overthrown in 1979. Soon thereafter, a fatwa, or religious death sentence, was issued against Bakhtiar and he went into exile. He was a leading critic of the mullahs in Tehran until his assassination.

“The facts … establish that Chapour was specifically targeted for death by officials and agents of the Iranian government,” Judge Kennedy wrote.

Judge Kennedy said the law did not permit damages for Bakhtiar’s son or stepdaughter. In 2002, the late dissident’s daughter, France Rafii, won a $305 million judgment against Iran from another judge in Washington.

American courts have awarded at least $8.6 billion in default judgment against Iran for terrorist acts carried out by groups the Islamic Republic sponsors, such as Hamas, Hezbollah, and Palestinian Islamic Jihad. The awards are rarely collected, because Iran has few assets in America.