The bombing of Iran by the United States of America and Israel has triggered a proxy flame war — this one within the global far-Right.
Across the MAGA movement in the US and Europe’s nationalist parties, a debate is breaking out over whether the strikes represent a justified confrontation with an Islamist regime or are the kind of foreign war these movements once rose to oppose in the midst of the American ‘forever wars’ in Iraq and Afghanistan. The strikes on Iran are now forcing them to choose between the two.
The American conservative news ecosystem has remained largely aligned with Donald Trump. Fox News contributors have described the strikes as both “just and imperative” and “a successful, coordinated effort to promote fundamental and lasting change in Iran”. In an editorial, the New York Post praised Trump’s “decisive move to destroy Iran’s war machinery and take out the regime’s leadership”.
Outside those institutional voices, however, parts of the far-Right online ecosystem have reacted very differently. The White supremacist podcaster, Nick Fuentes, announced he was “off the Trump train” over the strikes in Iran. The former Fox News hosts, Tucker Carlson and Megyn Kelly, argued that the US is too deferential to Israeli interests, with Carlson suggesting a conspiracy theory that orthodox Jews encouraged the attacks for religious reasons. The conspiracy theorist and online agitator, Candace Owens, went further. On X, she dubbed the US-Israeli operation “Operation Epstein Fury”, not only suggesting it was a distraction from Trump’s involvement in the Jeffrey Epstein scandal but also invoking antisemitic conspiracy theories, claiming that “goyim” — a Hebrew term for non-Jews — “always… die so the Khazarian mafia can expand their borders”. (The ‘Khazarian mafia’ refers to another antisemitic conspiracy theory that is meant to imply a secret Jewish cabal controlling government, finance and wars.)
Across Europe, nationalist parties are confronting a similar dilemma. Many define themselves in opposition to what they describe as the ‘Islamisation’ of Europe and portray Israel as a frontline state in the struggle against Islamist extremism. At the same time, they have built much of their appeal around opposition to foreign military interventions and criticism of American global power.
The bombing of Iran has brought those narratives into direct conflict.
In France, the far-Right National Rally — currently polling in first place ahead of next year’s presidential election — has attempted to balance its nationalist scepticism of foreign intervention with its increasingly pro-Israel rhetoric. Earlier this year, the party criticised US intervention in Venezuela, arguing that capturing the country’s leader, Nicolás Maduro, would violate national sovereignty.
Its response to the strikes on Iran has been noticeably more cautious. “We support the actions taken by the United States, even if, frankly, we do not like the unilateral aspect of them,” Sébastien Chenu, vice-president of the National Rally, said recently. Jordan Bardella, the party’s president, has repeatedly described the “Islamist threat” as a common enemy for France and Israel. Last year, he travelled to Israel in a historic first for the party’s leadership — a move widely interpreted as an effort to distance the movement from the antisemitism and Holocaust-denial associated with its founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen.
Germany’s far-Right Alternative for Germany has been even more openly divided. In a brief statement, the AfD parliamentary group leaders, Alice Weidel and Tino Chrupalla, warned that the escalation would further destabilise the region. “The renewed destabilisation of the Middle East is not in Germany’s interest and must be stopped,” they said. But the leadership within the party is not aligned. The AfD parliamentarian, Rainer Kraft, wrote on social media: “If right-wing patriots sound and express themselves the same way as Annalena Baerbock, then there’s a good chance they aren’t right-wing patriots at all!” Baerbock, currently serving as president of the United Nations General Assembly, had also condemned the attack on Iran. Within the AfD, comparing a party member to a Green politician is considered a particularly sharp insult. Another faction is far more sceptical of Washington and tends to frame the US as an imperial power whose interventions destabilise other regions. Many politicians in this camp have also argued that Germany should distance itself from Western support for Ukraine — a position critics say aligns with the Kremlin’s interests.
Beyond these party disputes, the escalation is also revealing something deeper about the future of the transatlantic relationship.
For decades, Europe — led especially by Germany — has invested heavily in maintaining its security partnership with the US. Even as European governments have begun increasing defence spending and rebuilding their own military capabilities in response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, many leaders take a sober view: without the US, Europe remains militarily vulnerable.
That reality is shaping how European governments respond to Washington’s latest military action. Rather than openly challenging the strikes, several capitals appear eager to demonstrate alignment with the US — even under the increasingly unpredictable leadership of Trump.
Two decades ago, the dynamic looked very different. When France refused to support the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003, the disagreement triggered a bitter rupture in transatlantic relations. In the US, ‘French fries’ were famously rechristened ‘freedom fries’. Yet the alliance itself was never seriously in doubt. Today, the situation is reversed. With Washington’s long-term commitment to Europe increasingly uncertain, European leaders are often reluctant to openly oppose US military initiatives.
The result is a growing willingness to follow Washington’s lead — even when doing so risks contradicting Europe’s own political traditions. Europe has long sought to project itself as a global champion of diplomacy, international law and democratic norms. But in its effort to preserve the American security umbrella, the continent may increasingly find itself endorsing the very kind of militarism it once claimed to resist.
As the conflict with Iran unfolds, the contradictions inside the far-Right — and across the Atlantic alliance more broadly — are likely to deepen. For movements built on competing instincts about nationalism, sovereignty and global power, war has a way of forcing those tensions into the open.
Carol Schaeffer is a journalist based in Berlin, Germany, and is a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council in Washington D.C.