BRUSSELS (Dispatches) – U.S. sanctions on Tehran are hurting the Europeans in ways unheard of until now, where Afghans migrating from Iran pose an immediate problem to the bloc.
Official data released on Tuesday showed Afghans are now the largest nationality entering the bloc, with many relocating from Iran due to the hardship caused by US sanctions.
The EU is currently bracing itself for a new influx of refugees in the wake of Turkey’s incursion into Kurdish-controlled northeastern Syria, but "EU officials warned that the increasing number of Afghans posed a more immediate problem,” Reuters reported.
According to the latest data from EU border agency Frontex, nearly 17,000 Afghans have crossed the Aegean sea to reach EU shores since the beginning of the year.
Around half of them had been living in Iran before attempting the crossing through Turkey into the EU, a senior EU official cited by Reuters said, adding that in many cases Afghan migrants arriving to Europe were born in Iran.
Iran has been hosting one of the most important refugee populations in the world, mostly from Afghanistan and Iraq.
About 3 million Afghan refugees have been living in Iran since the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan in 1979. Many arrived when the Islamic Republic was in the throes of an eight-year war launched by the former Ba’ath regime of Saddam Hussein who was supported both by the East and the West.
Despite being a social and economic burden, Afghan refugees were allowed to work everywhere in Iran. And as the war ended, many refugees who had settled in Iran or had a chance for better life did not go back to Afghanistan even after the Taliban fell.
That has changed to a degree since the geopolitical showdown escalated between Iran and the U.S. in 2015, when President Donald Trump announced "the most biting sanctions ever imposed” on Tehran.
Millions of Afghan refugees, disaster victims and ordinary communities in Iran became the first and hardest hit victims of the draconian measure.
U.S. leaders have cast the sanctions as intended to ramp up pressure on the government of Iran, but the real pain has come upon vulnerable communities impacted by the coercive action against the Iranian economy.  
Because of the sanctions, the cost of living in Iran has skyrocketed. As a result, the number of Afghans in need has nearly doubled and pushed almost 3 million people into emergency levels of hunger, according to Secretary General of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC) Jan Egeland.
Mostly neglected in all the political discourse of the West, the ripple effect is now reaching the Europeans shores, especially the Greek islands where many of Afghan refugees first arrive.
Over 13,000 men, women and children are now crammed into the Moria camp on Lesbos, which was designed to accommodate 3,100 people, according to charity group Oxfam.
In 2018, about 12,000 Afghans were recorded to have illegally crossed the EU borders, but that number could now double, Reuters said.
"They are leaving because the U.S. policy has significantly deteriorated the economic situation in Iran,” the unnamed senior European official told Reuters.
European authorities, who have failed to help Iran in any meaningful way to cope with the situation and protect Tehran against the sanctions, are alarmed. German Interior Home Minister Horst Seehofer warned last week that the EU risked a repeat of the 2015 chaos.
Iranian officials said Afghan workers are leaving to seek better ways to support families left behind in Afghanistan.
Those remaining - and still in millions - are making their best to take the U.S.-imposed situation in their stride and Iran is helping them.
According to officials, Iran rang in the new school year last month with some 500,000 foreign students enrolled in around 28,000 schools across the country.
To understand the difficulty of the task the Iranians have to deal with, one has to bear in mind that devastating floods in Iran in April destroyed many schools, hospitals and homes and left 2 million people in need.
That is while the U.S. blacklisting of financial transactions with Iran means any humanitarian aid, if any, can barely reach the country, including for flood victims and Afghan refugees.