The US and Israel launched wide-ranging strikes on Iran on the 28th of February, targeting missile infrastructure, military, and the Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who has since been confirmed to have died during the first wave of attacks.
With a successor, Mojtaba Khamenei, now in place, the conflict shows no sign of stopping. In fact, it destabilized the entire region, with Iran targeting Israel and US-allied states in the Gulf, extending attacks to civilian sites and energy facilities.
The European Union’s Agency for Asylum voiced concerns before the attack even happened: their Annual Analysis for 2025 Trends, finalized in February, warned that the displacement of just 10% of Iran’s population could “generate refugee movements of an unprecedented magnitude” that could “rival the largest refugee flows of recent decades.”
Displacement Rising Across the Middle East
Iran’s retaliatory strikes hit not only Israel but also Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as well as a British base in Cyprus. Strikes also reached Azerbaijan, though Iran denies it was behind the attack. Israel also began an offensive against Hezbollah in Lebanon.
The UN Refugee Agency (UNHCR) estimates that even before the conflict began, 25 million people were refugees in the region, internally displaced, or recently returned to difficult conditions. Iran was home to 1.65 million refugees, mostly Afghans.
As of 10 March, the war is reported to have killed 1,230 people in Iran, at least 397 in Lebanon, and 11 in Israel, according to the Guardian.
Displacement has remained largely internal, according to Amy Pope, head of the International Organization for Migration (IOM).
“One of the concerns is right now some of the borders are being closed to Iranians who are fleeing the conflict,” she said, adding that such constrictions make the “the risk to human life” much higher.
She added the country of largest concern is not Iran but Lebanon, which has been reported to have the largest displacement numbers. A 6 March UNHCR briefing estimated over 96,000 people were forced to flee, sheltering in 440 sites; their report comes from the Lebanese Government.
But Edouard Beigbeder, Unicef regional director, reported a very different statistic speaking to the Guardian on 10 March. “Mass displacement across Lebanon has forced nearly 700,000 people – including around 200,000 children – from their homes, adding to the tens of thousands already uprooted from previous escalations,” the outlet reported.
UNHCR has since confirmed this number in a Facebook post, reflecting the significant impact of the escalation.
Many have also fled to Syria, according to the UNHCR briefing; along with at least 33,600 Syrians, about 3,000 Lebanese have also crossed the Syrian border. In a post this Tuesday (March 10), they reported that number to have risen to 78,000 Syrians and over 7,000 Lebanese.
In terms of Iranian numbers, reports have been hard to come by. The UNHCR reported 100,000 leaving Tehran in the first two days of the conflict, a number they say has since been surpassed.
Whatever the number may be, experts believe it is only a matter of time until their movement becomes international. When that happens, they are most likely to flee through Turkey towards Europe, as Syrians and Afghans did in 2015.
However, there is a sentiment in Turkey to not become a transit state once again, with preparations to raise displacement camps along its border with Iran. The EU’s expectations might fall apart in practice if Turkey interprets EU intentions as using the partnership to make Turkey a buffer zone.
Foreigners Stuck in Conflict
Iran’s retaliatory strikes meant the war reached across the Middle East, paralyzing air travel, meaning it wasn’t just locals facing the strikes.
About 2.4 million Filipinos are living across the Middle East, having moved to the region in search of better wages and the capability to send money home to their families. A Filipino carer, Mary Ann De Vera, was the first victim of strikes in Israel, having protected the elderly woman she was hired to care for.
Thousands of others remain in uncertainty, working across the region in various industries, including healthcare, construction, engineering, and domestic work. They are essential to the economy back home as well, due to the tens of billions of dollars in remittance they provide.
Robert Laurince Ramil has been working in the mechanical department of a gas plant in Qatar. Since the strikes, he has been stuck in his dorm room, unable to work, though he continues to get paid amid daily blasts. “We can find work anywhere, but your safety and life are more important,” he says.
They are not the only ones unable to leave the region: the EU has also been struggling to repatriate its citizens. In principle, each EU citizen can go to any EU country’s embassy, all of which are obliged to offer evacuation and repatriation aid to all EU nationals.
The EU Civil Protection Mechanism and the Emergency Response Coordination Centre are the main tools for this. During the pandemic, they organized 400 flights for 100,000 Europeans, while the 2023 Afghanistan withdrawal involved 3,000 citizens across 98 flights.
Currently, efforts are still underway, but Hadja Lahbib, Commissioner for Equality, Preparedness, and Crisis Management, told Euronews that since the first day of the escalation, the EU has organized over 40 flights, “bringing over 4,000 Europeans home safely.”
The UK also began evacuation flights, struggling to coordinate the return of what UK Defence Secretary John Healey said was more than 170,000 Britons who registered their presence in the Middle East. Since March 1, around 45,000 nationals have returned.
There are many international pilgrims in the region as well, having traveled to Saudi Arabia for the Umrah pilgrimage. As of March 5, about 58,860 Indonesian pilgrims were stranded in Saudi Arabia. The Indonesian government urged about 60,000 others to postpone their travels.
The US is also continuously evacuating its citizens, with more than 36,000 returned as of March 10.
Numbers Uncertain as War Unfolds
Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) say they can continue “intense war” for six months, while Trump has said the US “decimated their whole evil empire.” However, the war continues.
IOM Chief Amy Pope said that the EU is keen to “have a much more comprehensive approach early on, as opposed to waiting for the conflict to bleed over.” Cyprus’s deputy migration minister Nicholas Ioannides agreed, telling The Financial Times that the EU has “improved our infrastructure, our procedures and our legislation… to address this kind of crisis.”
But amid far-right parties raising anti-immigration sentiment, even such ambitions could get problematic. Meanwhile, the people of the Middle East continue to struggle as the UNHCR and IOM call for de-escalation.
