The US-Israeli war on Iran has exposed divisions among Europe\u2019s far-right parties and personalities.<\/p>\n
In one camp, Atlanticists such as Nigel Farage, founder of the populist hard-right Reform UK party, support the war.<\/p>\n list of 4 items<\/span>end of list<\/span><\/section>\n In a recent post on X, he urged United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer to \u201cback the Americans in this vital fight against Iran!\u201d<\/p>\n Days later, he stated that any refugees fleeing Iran \u201cshould be housed in the Middle East and not in Britain\u201d.<\/p>\n Spain\u2019s far-right Vox party has also backed the war, criticising Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez after the left-wing prime minister condemned it as an \u201cunjustified\u201d and \u201cdangerous military intervention\u201d.<\/p>\n Others are more sceptical.<\/p>\n Tino Chrupalla, co-chair of Alternative for Germany (AfD), warned that US President Donald Trump was becoming a \u201cpresident of war\u201d.<\/p>\n Markus Frohnmaier, the AfD\u2019s lead candidate for state elections in Baden-Wurttemberg, told Welt that the war must be considered in a \u201cnuanced way\u201d and that it is in \u201cGermany\u2019s interest\u201d not to experience \u201cnew migration flows\u201d as a result of it.<\/p>\n In the UK, two combative figures, Tommy Robinson and Paul Golding, are diverging over the war.<\/p>\n Robinson, an Islamophobe and staunch supporter of Israel, has enthusiastically supported it, while Golding, leader of the far-right Britain First party, took to X to write: \u201cNot our fight, not our war. Put Britain First.\u201d<\/p>\n Other parties appear hesitant.<\/p>\n Marine Le Pen, leader of France\u2019s far-right National Rally, criticised US intervention in Venezuela in January, stating \u201cthe sovereignty of States is never negotiable\u201d.<\/p>\n However, after the Iran war began, she expressed cautious support, telling French media that she found \u201cnothing shocking\u201d about President Emmanuel Macron\u2019s announcement that France was sending an aircraft carrier to the Mediterranean in response to the widening conflict.<\/p>\n The split in opinion over Iran reflects a \u201cparadox\u201d about the European far right, Tim Bale, a politics professor at Queen Mary University of London, told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n The hard right is often \u201cseen as riding a wave built on similar grievances and concerns in every country \u2013 most obviously around immigration\u201d, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s also built on nationalism and, as a result, there are limits both to cooperation between different parties in different countries.\u201d<\/p>\n He said that historically, parts of the far right in countries such as France and Germany have viewed the United States with suspicion, while others, particularly in countries where anti-communism shaped post-war politics, tended to see Washington as a strategic ally.<\/p>\n That divergence is now resurfacing over Iran.<\/p>\n Morgan Finnsio, a Swedish researcher who studies far-right movements, noted that the Western far right has long aspired to ideological unity but has consistently fractured over geopolitical issues.<\/p>\n He told Al Jazeera that factions were previously split over Russia\u2019s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.<\/p>\n Divisions now centre on Trump\u2019s \u201cradical new geopolitical orientation, with its consequences such as attacking Venezuela [and] threatening Greenland\u201d, he told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n \u201cIn recent years, [Vladimir] Putin\u2019s Russia, Trump\u2019s United States, and [Benjamin] Netanyahu\u2019s Israel have all courted European far-right actors,\u201d said Finnsio, adding that \u201cthese outside powers have geopolitical preferences that tend to be absorbed by their allies and proteges.\u201d<\/p>\n Those with closer ties to Washington or Israel have supported the onslaught in Iran, which has killed more than 1,000 people, he said. Parties with stronger ideological or political affinities with Russia, which maintains ties with Iran, have been more cautious or openly opposed.<\/p>\n Far-right positions on foreign conflicts are \u201cmore motivated by the particular geopolitical circumstances at a given time\u201d rather than principles, Finnsio said.<\/p>\n Finnsio said these divisions are maintaining an \u201calready-existing\u201d split.<\/p>\n Whether the Iran war will impact elections remains to be seen, he added.<\/p>\n In the UK, Bale said it could.<\/p>\n \u201cFarage\u2019s gung-ho attitude to the attack on Iran may please some of his party\u2019s base, but voters as a whole aren\u2019t enthusiastic, and Reform UK will likely perform less well than it would have done in contests coming up this spring.\u201d<\/p>\n Reform UK is currently leading national opinion polls.<\/p>\n Its leadership has backed the war, but polling suggests its voters are less enthusiastic, with a March 2026 YouGov survey showing that only 28 percent of Reform UK voters strongly support US military actions against Iran.<\/p>\n More broadly, analysts suggest that a close association with US President Donald Trump could become politically risky.<\/p>\n \u201cI think any European far-right actor that is seen as being too close to Trump may find themselves discredited to some extent,\u201d said Finnsio, while cautioning that the longer-term landscape remains uncertain.<\/p>\n Even when the war enters political debate, analysts say it is more likely to be reframed through domestic issues for the far right.<\/p>\n Finnsio pointed to Sweden\u2019s September elections as an example.<\/p>\n He said if the war features in the election campaigns, \u201cit will be discussed in the terms of the \u2018risk\u2019 that Sweden be \u2018exposed\u2019 to a new influx of refugees \u2013 thereby bringing the discussion back to the topic Sweden has, thanks to the [nationalist and right-wing populist political party] Sweden Democrats, already been obsessing over for years, which is migration and integration\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n The US-Israeli war on Iran has exposed divisions among Europe\u2019s far-right parties and personalities. In one camp, Atlanticists such as Nigel Farage, founder of the populist hard-right Reform UK party, support the war. Recommended Stories list of 4 itemsend of list In a recent post on X, he urged United Kingdom Prime Minister Keir Starmer […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14650,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14649","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-europe-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14649","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14649"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14649\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14650"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14649"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14649"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14649"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Recommended Stories <\/h2>\n
![\"Nigel](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/2020-10-28T230752Z_20266224_RC2ZRJ9HO8BU_RTRMADP_3_USA-ELECTION-TRUMP.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
The limits of far-right unity<\/h2>\n
Existing fault lines<\/h2>\n
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