Blaming Refugees Not Warmongers: The Right-wing Press, Fortress Europe and ‘Weaponized Migration’

An expected refugee crisis is looming from the US-Israeli wars on Iran and Lebanon. This probability has already been raised by aid agencies, but also, of course, by the right-wing press that thrives on the fear-mongering that Europe is being overrun by foreigners. As a GB News headline blared just days into the conflict: “Europe braces for ANOTHER migrant crisis…’It will wash up on Britain’s shores!’”

While the obvious connection is made between the war and the likelihood of millions fleeing, the implication of such articles and videos is that Iran is responsible, rather than the whole debacle being due to an illegal war of aggression.

This propaganda line – which is also a diversionary tactic – has been extremely effective over the years, that immigrants are coming to Europe for reasons other than conflict, economic exploitation, or Western policies, including regime change and instigated uprisings, like in Iraq, Libya and Syria.

Indeed, just weeks before the war on Iran, I mentioned to two middle-class Italian ladies the fact that US wars forced refugees to head for Europe, and opined that European countries should have opposed such aggression from happening in the first place. They were surprised, saying they had not made that connection before. Incredible, the lack of critical thinking to make that link between the US, Israel and Europe’s warmongering in the wider Middle East and beyond, and Europe’s ‘migration crisis’.

Of course, if that connection –the context– is not made in news articles, TV reports or social media videos, it is easy to imply that migrants are coming to Europe for reasons other than those caused primarily by Western imperialism. This is sadly not that surprising, however, as context requires space and time, and media outlets increasingly cut back on such background as people don’t want to read more than a few hundred words or watch lengthy explanations of how we got to where we are at; sound bites are preferable. Reflective of this is that news agency Reuters a few years ago cut the standard length of articles from 800 to 600 words over concerns about reader attention spans. That cut of 200 words is concerning, as it is just enough words – a few paragraphs – to provide some context.

The other talking point that the right-wing media brings up that needs to be watched out for is the trope of ‘weaponized mass migration’ or ‘migrant warfare’. The GB News article quotes Mani Basharzad at the UK’s right-wing think-tank the Institute for Economic Affairs saying: “The Islamic regime mobilises illegal immigration … These people are a real threat to England (and) a real threat to the countries that they are in.”

This concept of ‘weaponized migration’ surfaced in a 2011 book, Weapons of Mass Migration by Kelly Greenhill, which argues that migration can be a ‘geopolitical weapon in asymmetric statecraft’. The concept has been picked up by the European Commission, the UN, NATO, and the US – there was a House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Europe hearing in February on the topic – with ‘migrant warfare’ supposedly a part of ‘hybrid warfare’ being used against Europe ‘to shape national and international policies’, whether by Moscow, Tehran or another usual suspect.

The book argues that in the 64 documented cases of ‘coercive engineered migration’ since 1951, over half have been successful in achieving political goals. I am not sure how the author’s mental gymnastics ended up making such a conclusion based on cases studies on Cuba’s 1980 Mariel Boatlift, Slobodan Milošević’s threats during the Kosovo crisis, Haiti’s 1991 boat people crisis, and North Korea’s potential threats to China. Indeed, if Cuba was, as alleged, using migrant warfare to bring down the US, then Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who is of Cuban origin, must be so deep undercover that even he doesn’t know it – or maybe he is a modern day Manchurian Candidate?

In any case, these migrant warfare stories do not hold water. Sure, people could point to, for instance, the case of the three Iranian asylum seekers arrested last year in the UK for allegedly spying, but that hardly constitutes a major threat or that Iranians trying to migrate to the UK are undercover agents or fifth columnists.

This weaponized migration argument is particularly disturbing coming from countries that have caused so much mass migration, and in the cases of the USA and Israel, their colonial-settler origins are based on weaponized mass migration to ethnically cleanse the indigenous population – just ask the original citizens of Turtle Island or Palestinians.

The other anti-immigrant argument being put forward is rooted in Islamophobia, that any refugees from Iran or Lebanon will be, or become, Islamic extremists. As the GB News article quoted Tobias Ellwood, a former Conservative MP and chairman of the Defence Select Committee: “The other one is extremism, because when people do depart from war zones, they could easily then be subject to indoctrination and then you get Islamic extremists coming out from that.”

What is not mentioned here is the link between people being radicalised and their country being bombed, friends and family killed, and their lives smashed. As a study in which nineteen university students role-played the persona of an apprehended suicide bomber showed, the psychological mechanisms to do such an act of self-sacrifice may be universal rather than rooted in religious extremism.

The ‘real story’ is not the refugees that might make their way to Europe. It is the huge numbers of people that will be displaced in the Middle East. The International Organisation for Migration has estimated that more than 19 million people are already internally displaced due to conflict, violence and disasters across the wider Middle East. The war on Iran has now caused 3.2 million Iranians to be internally displaced, while in Lebanon, close to 1 million are displaced. Such numbers will inevitably increase as the wars continue.

While some refugees will try to get to Europe, most will be forced to stay in the region, as happened with the Syrian refugee crisis from 2011 onwards. Europeans point to the 1.3 million Syrians who came, and the nearly 1.1 million granted some form of asylum between 2015 and 2023, yet Europeans overlook that Lebanon took in around 1 million Syrians – roughly 20% of Lebanon’s population. It caused immense pressure on Lebanon, as well as anti-Syrian sentiment, but it did not cause the same uproar as in Europe, or bolster right-wing populists, as in Europe and the UK, with the anti-immigration sentiment playing a role in Brexit.

This time, unlike with the Syrian crisis, Europe is better prepared to stop the ‘barbarians at the gates’, having spent billions of euros on Fortress Europe and outsourcing prevention. Countries such as Italy and Spain have outsourced migrant processing centres offshore, Germany is considering doing the same, while the EU has essentially paid off Turkiye, Libya and elsewhere in North Africa to prevent migrant outflows. A new EU Pact on Migration and Asylum is also to take effect in June, with mandatory border procedures, faster asylum processing, and a common return system put in place.

Europe is beefing up Frontex, its border patrol force, as part of the Fortress Europe approach, with an additional 10,000 officers to be added to its current ranks of 1,300 by 2027, and a further 30,000 proposed for the near future. Frontex has been accused of using state-organised violence as ‘deterrence’, with the EU agency linked to the deaths of 2,000 migrants. Coast guards, such as Greece’s, have used deadly tactics, in 2023 ramming a migrant boat and killing 15 people.

The idea of ‘re-emigration’ has also taken root in Europe as a means to kick out migrants, which, if there is an uptick in migration due to the wars on Iran and Lebanon, may rise further up the agenda of right-wing political parties, and could result in such populists taking further cues from the Trump playbook by instigating ICE-style arrests and deportations.

Europe’s crackdown on migrant smuggling and other policies has led to a decline in irregular migration, down 38% in 2024 on the previous year, and down 30% in the first quarter of 2025, while 110,385 third-country nationals were returned to their home countries in 2024, up 19.3% from 2023.

Yet despite Fortress Europe’s offensive and defensive posturing on refugees, the push factors for people to leave the Middle East keep piling up, due to both American and European actions. While US wars exacerbate economic instability, and the current war on Iran is driving up the prices of food and energy, the stop-gaps that had been in place, notably humanitarian aid, are drying up. The Trump administration has cut 90% of funding for USAID, as well as for other NGOs and UN programmes. The UK, Germany, the Netherlands and others have also cut humanitarian assistance to bolster defence budgets. In short, the very agencies that mopped up after previous US wars have either ended operations or are underfunded and overstretched. It will add to the push factors for people to leave the region. The drop in aid will also force Europe to shore up authoritarian governments such as Turkiye’s and Egypt’s as part of efforts to stop migrants leaving their shores. This will provide bargaining chips for Turkiye’s Erdogan and Egypt’s Sisi in their negotiations with Europe – pay up, don’t criticize us, or we open the gates.

The glimmer of hope is that Europe wakes up and realizes the cause for a great deal of instability and suffering on its immediate southern border is due to the US and Israel’s actions, and demands a stop to the warmongering while placing full blame on Washington and Tel Aviv for any fallout. But going by recent history, the lack of context in much of the coverage of the wars on Iran and Lebanon, and the spinelessness of the European establishment to stand up to the American hegemon or the Zionists, this is not likely to happen – but if it does, it will already be too late.

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