Europe’s Security Crisis

Inside Belgium’s Ministry of Defense in Brussels, I sat down with Belgian Defense Minister Theo Francken to discuss a question many Europeans increasingly find themselves asking:

Why are soldiers back on the streets of Europe?

Belgium has deployed up to 200 soldiers across Brussels and Antwerp to protect Jewish communities, patrol metro stations and reinforce security amid growing fears of terrorism, organized crime and Islamist violence.

“The situation is very, very dangerous for the moment,” Francken told me.

Nearly ten years after the Brussels ISIS attacks that killed 32 people, Belgium once again finds itself on high alert.

The Islamist Threat

During our conversation, Francken spoke openly about what he sees as the primary security threat facing Belgium and much of Europe today: radical Islamism.

“Of course it’s an Islamist threat,” he said directly when I asked where the growing insecurity and terror threat facing Belgium was coming from.

According to Francken, Belgian authorities are particularly concerned about Iranian regime-linked sleeper cells and networks connected to the IRGC operating on European soil. He referenced past Iranian-linked terror plots in Europe, including the case of Assadollah Assadi, an Iranian diplomat convicted over a planned bombing attack near Paris. For Francken, these are not abstract threats.

“These are enemy combatants on Western soil,” he told me.

Europe Under Pressure

One of the striking themes of the interview was how Belgium’s security crisis now extends far beyond terrorism alone. The deployed soldiers are also being used to combat drug violence, criminal networks and illegal migration in Brussels.

“We need to take back control,” Francken said.

He warned that Europe faces overlapping threats simultaneously: Islamist extremism; Iranian-backed networks; organized crime; Russian hybrid warfare; cyberattacks; sabotage operations. And according to Belgium’s threat assessment agencies, a major terrorist attack against Jewish or American targets in Europe remains highly possible.

Europe’s Demographic Shift

Toward the end of our discussion, we turned to one of the most politically explosive subjects in Europe today: mass migration and demographic change.

I asked Francken whether he was concerned about growing sectarian divisions in Western Europe as migration from Africa and the Middle East continues reshaping European societies. His answer was more nuanced than many hardline European conservatives.

Francken acknowledged serious integration challenges and warned about extremism, but also argued that many migrants are fully integrated and strongly support Western values.

“For me, it’s not black and white,” he said. “It’s about our shared future.”

Still, his broader warning remained clear: Europe can no longer afford complacency. The deployment of soldiers onto the streets of Brussels , something that once would have seemed unimaginable in the heart of Western Europe, reflects how profoundly the continent’s security environment has changed over the past decade.

And according to Belgium’s own defense minister, Europe is entering a period where vigilance, security and political realism may increasingly define the future of the continent.