Rather than treating Iran‑related displacement as an isolated case, the session will explore how sanctions, economic pressures and geopolitical tensions intersect with domestic political conditions to shape patterns of movement from Iran and across its neighbouring states. Drawing on academic research and practice‑based insights, speakers will analyse the mechanisms through which these pressures contribute to outward mobility, asylum claims and onward migration, while reflecting on the methodological and ethical challenges of studying displacement in highly securitised Middle Eastern contexts.

The discussion will embed these dynamics within the broader regional system of displacement that characterises the contemporary Middle East and will consider how these patterns intersect with evolving practices of migration diplomacy. Protracted conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, sanctions‑induced economic crises, humanitarian degradation and shifting geopolitical rivalries have produced overlapping and mutually reinforcing drivers of forced mobility—drivers that states within and beyond the region increasingly negotiate through diplomatic, security and migration‑management channels. By integrating scholarly perspectives with practitioner experience, the event will highlight how regional power politics and international interventions shape the terms on which mobility is governed, bargained over, and externalised, including in European and other international arenas.

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