Friction between the European Union and Russia-backed Belarus escalated Monday, while a top U.S. diplomat in the region called on Moscow to exert its influence over Belarusian leader Alexander Lukashenko to stop inflaming regional tensions.

U.S. Ambassador to Belarus Julie D. Fisher, a career diplomat appointed by former President Donald Trump, said Monday that Russia could play a constructive role amid European claims that the Lukashenko government has attempted to flood Middle Eastern migrants into Poland, Lithuania and other EU nations as a way to destabilize the region and protest EU and U.S. economic sanctions.

“Russian disinformation efforts use actions in Belarus such as the migrant crisis to stoke tensions and undermine European unity and trans-Atlantic unity,” Ms. Fisher said Monday. “But it is important to recognize that Moscow has influence, unique influence over the Lukashenko regime. And we welcome Moscow using that influence in a way that moves Belarus forward.”

She made the remarks on a video call hosted by the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars at a moment of rising regional tension over Belarus. Mr. Lukashenko on Monday once again sharply criticized the EU, this time calling out what he said was the bloc’s refusal to hold talks on the migrant standoff.

A week after EU officials announced plans to level sanctions against the Lukashenko government for flying migrants from Iraq and other Middle East nations into Belarus as a pathway into Europe, Mr. Lukashenko publicly demanded on Monday that the migrants should be allowed to enter EU territory.

Mr. Lukashenko specifically urged Germany to accommodate about 2,000 migrants who have remained on Belarus‘ border with Poland in recent days, and openly slammed EU officials for refusing to talk. “We must demand that the Germans take them,” the Belarusian leader said, according to a report from Moscow by The Associated Press.

The Belarus leader accused Western governments and aid organizations of using the migrant standoff to score “publicity points” against his government, according to the country’s BelTA news agency.

“We will cope with these people ourselves if Berlin does not take them in. What are we supposed to do? There’s no other way around it. But we should urge Berlin to take them in,” Mr. Lukashenko said.

The Belarus regime has been under steady pressure since a widely discredited 2020 election gave Mr. Lukashenko, in power since 1994, another term in office. EU officials have accused Mr. Lukashenko of engineering the migrant surge as part of a “hybrid attack” as retaliation for EU sanctions after the Lukashenko government cracked down on pro-democracy demonstrations. 

Russian role?

But the migrant situation has prompted some analysts to claim Mr. Lukashenko is being used by Russia to try and foment EU political divisions over immigration and to destabilize Poland and Lithuania at a time when Moscow’s own relations with the West are on shaky ground.

The Biden administration has tied the migrant crisis at the border to the Kremlin, claiming that Russian President Vladimir Putin’s government is using Belarus to signal his unhappiness with the U.S. and its Western allies and to cloak Moscow’s border troop build-up and military intimidation campaign targeting other former Soviet states in Ukraine and Georgia. Polish officials said there were over 300 attempts by migrants on Sunday to get through a razor-wire border fence separating Belarus from the EU nation. 

Many of the hundreds of Iraqis stuck in limbo in Belarus have booked flights back home, while others remain under guard in crowded migrant centers on the Belarus side of the border. Officials said over the weekend that of about 1,900 migrants in those centers, more than 1,200 are Iraqis. About 700 have applied for international protection and are waiting for a decision on whether they will be allowed to stay in the EU.

Polish Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki has begun warning of a possible new migrant surge by the Lukashenko regime — this time from Afghanistan and Uzbekistan.

Mr. Morawiecki claimed on Sunday to have knowledge of “diplomatic” contacts that Belarus and Russia had with Uzbekistan and Afghanistan. “There is a threat of an even more difficult scenario,” he said. “There will most probably be an attempt at using the crisis in Afghanistan as a new act in the migration crisis, putting to use the West’s remorse related to the disorderly pullout from Afghanistan.”

Mr. Morawiecki said “only the full pullback of the migrants and steps toward deescalation can lead back to any kind of a constructive scenario with Lukashenko.”

Regional experts say Mr. Lukashenko has engineered the migrant crisis to pressure the EU into granting sanctions relief.

Oleg Ignatov with the International Crisis Group, in a Q&A analysis published by the group on Monday, said the Lukashenko government has already “drawn an analogy between the present situation and the Greek-Turkish border crisis in 2015.”

“In that crisis, more than a million refugees from the war in Syria entered the EU, and Brussels cut a deal with Ankara to halt further entries,” he said. “It committed to provide [$6.7 billion] in exchange for Ankara’s agreement to prevent the migrants from leaving its territory.”

Like Turkey, Mr. Ignatov added, Belarus “is angling for a deal of its own.”

Ms. Fisher suggested in her own remarks on Monday that the Biden administration will stand with the EU in efforts to confront the Lukashenko government. 

“As long as the regime in Belarus refuses to respect its international obligations and commitments, undermines the peace and security of Europe, and continues to repress and abuse people seeking to live in freedom, we will continue to pressure the Lukashenko regime and we will not lessen our calls for accountability,” she said.

The White House said Monday it has no plans to shut down the economy again as COVID-19 chaos seizes Europe, with lockdowns meant to thwart a fourth wave triggering violent protests.

A German official declared his countrymen will be “vaccinated, cured or dead.”

Austrians were told to stay home for 10 days, starting Monday, except to go to work or school, or to get groceries or exercise, prompting thousands to protest in the streets of Vienna. Similar protests against a partial COVID-19 lockdown broke out in the Netherlands, resulting in fires and clashes with police, and tens of thousands of Belgians took to the streets as politicians warned of a virus crackdown.

White House COVID-19 Coordinator Jeff Zients said the U.S. has no interest in joining the fracas.

“No, we are not headed in that direction. We have the tools to accelerate the path out of this pandemic — widely available vaccinations, booster shots, kid shots, therapeutics, including monoclonal antibodies to help those who contract the virus,” he said at a COVID-19 task force briefing. “We can curb the spread of the virus without having to in any way shut down our economy.”

Viral spikes in Europe tend to augur what’s in store for Americans. Outbreaks in Italy and Spain at the start of the pandemic preceded a crush of cases in New York City, and a variant known as alpha battered the United Kingdom before walloping the U.S. and the rest of the world.

Mr. Biden faces pushback over workplace vaccine mandates but he has avoided talk of 2020-style restrictions, preferring instead to promote vaccines and pre-purchases of millions of courses of COVID-19 treatment pills.

Any push to renew draconian business restrictions would be devastating for Mr. Biden and is “just dead — dead on arrival,” said Arthur Caplan, a director of the division of medical ethics at the New York University Grossman School of Medicine.

“Politically, he’s already in trouble on the economy. Restricting the economy would seal the fate of the congressional elections,” Mr. Caplan said.

“I think there’s no evidence you can control this stupid virus by locking people up. You get a little relief and then boom, we’re back again,” he added. “The toll of restrictions — mass restrictions — is just huge. It’s completely untenable if you have an option that is purely pharmaceutical.”

Colorado Gov. Jared Polis recently placed medical breakthroughs over restrictions as his state battles a Mountain West surge. He said he does not plan to issue a statewide mask mandate because cases are comparable to New Mexico, despite its mask rules, and “scientists simply don’t know why our region has a spike.”

“We wouldn’t be here talking about this if everybody was vaccinated,” Mr. Polis, a Democrat, said at a press conference this month. “If you are not vaccinated you are going to get COVID. Maybe this week, maybe this month, maybe next year.”

New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, a Democrat who recently won reelection after fending off attacks over COVID-19 closures, spent his virus briefing Monday promoting boosters and a program that connects employers and workers looking to recover from the pandemic doldrums, rather than shut down again.

Besides vaccines and know-how, he said, “We’ve got other treatments, monoclonal antibodies, which we didn’t have. We’ve got the antivirals, and lot more tools in our toolbox, thank God.”

D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser this week lifted a city mask mandate.

Erie County officials in Buffalo, New York, bucked the trend and said Monday they would reimpose a mask mandate on Tuesday. If cases don’t go down, the county will take a look at vaccine mandates in “phase two” before eyeing capacity restrictions or shutdowns in phases three and four if the first steps don’t work.

“My own view is that more restrictive measures would be brought into play only if there was a substantial rise in COVID-related hospitalizations that threatened the overall capacity of the health care system,” said Daniel Kuritzkes, the chief of the division of infectious diseases at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

Mr. Zients said decisions on how to manage the virus are frequently done at the local level because community transmission and vaccination rates differ, though he emphasized scientific interventions.

“We need to use the tools we have and get more people vaccinated, to keep people safe without going backward in any shape or form,” he said.

He rejected economic lockdowns as counterparts across the pond grapple with the fallout from restrictions that range from mandatory vaccinations in Austria starting Feb. 1 — the first such step in the West — to a “partial lockdown” requiring bars and restaurants in the Netherlands to close early. Protests in Rotterdam led to standoffs with police, who deployed tear gas and water cannons on protesters who had hurled fireworks at them.

Dutch Prime Minister Mark Rutte called the protests “pure violence” by “idiots,” and Belgian leader Alexander de Croo called a similar protest by 35,000 in Brussels “absolutely unacceptable,” according to Agence France-Presse.

In Germany, departing Chancellor Angela Merkel said infections are doubling every 12 days in a “highly dramatic situation,” prompting a dire warning from a top health official.

“Probably by the end of this winter, as is sometimes cynically said, pretty much everyone in Germany will be vaccinated, cured or dead,” German Health Minister Jens Spahn said.

He promoted shots from Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna as the Mercedes-Benz and Rolls-Royce of vaccines, though he hasn’t ruled out another widespread lockdown as Ms. Merkel hinted that stronger measures will be needed.

About 67% of Germans are fully vaccinated but rates are far lower in eastern regions such as Saxony, where cultural sites, restaurants, bars and Christmas markets will be shut down for three weeks, according to Deutsche Welle media.

Some people see Europe’s viral surge as a direct warning for the U.S., where cases have climbed to more than 90,000 per day after a decrease to the low 70,000s in late October. Hospitalizations have ticked above 50,000.

It’s not as bad as Thanksgiving week last year, when the U.S. recorded 170,000 cases per day and averaged 90,000 hospitalizations ahead of a vaccine rollout that began in December. But the numbers are headed in the wrong direction.

“We’re experiencing the beginning of a winter wave, the consequences of too many unvaccinated and the need for boosters to halt infection,” said Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine.

Scientists say the current spike is driven by the fast-moving delta variant, which struck right as antibody responses from early vaccinations started to wane. Plus, the U.S., like Europe, might have relaxed mask guidance prematurely and opened the door for unvaccinated people to shed face coverings, too.

Analysts said they don’t expect European governments to be deterred from the strong-arm positions they are staking out, even amid protests.

“It’s not surprising Europe would potentially be headed down that path. Many of the countries are outright socialist nations where there is an inherent trust the government has the answer to all things and to all problems,” said Colin Reed, a GOP strategist and who worked as a spokesman for former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, a Republican.

In the U.S., however, “the fact Biden is pumping the brakes speaks to political peril that advocating such a policy might bring on,” Mr. Reed said. “It’s pretty clear Americans long ago grew tired of the forced mandates. I think the way out of this is through vaccines and getting people to make the decision on their own to get vaccinated.”

White House press secretary Jen Psaki said every country is different but the U.S. has the luxury of ample vaccines and Mr. Biden’s health team has not recommended shutdowns.

Officials advised people to avoid holiday gatherings last year, but the Biden administration told Americans it should be safe to enjoy Thanksgiving with fellow vaccinated people on Thursday.

The White House is pleading with roughly 47 million adults and 12 million teens who are eligible for shots yet remain unvaccinated, to come forward for the shots. They also called on vaccinated Americans to obtain an extra dose of one of three approved vaccines if they got their initial series at least six months ago.

Cyrus Shahpar, the COVID-19 data coordinator for the White House, tweeted that 461,000 people came forward to get vaccinated on Sunday and 890,000 came forward for a booster shot.

As it stands, 4 in 10 Americans are not fully vaccinated against COVID-19 while 18% of the fully vaccinated — about 35 million people — have received a booster.

Whether it is enough to help the U.S. avoid a full-scale disaster and European-style standoffs in the streets will be seen in the coming weeks.

“People do have fatigue. I’ve been triple-vaxxed now and I’m tired of the restrictions,” Democratic strategist Brad Bannon said. “I think we’ll get a true test as people will be gathering together for Thanksgiving and the holidays. If we get through that without a large outbreak, then we’ll be in good shape. I think it’s a function of whether people get vaccinated or not.”

• Jeff Mordock contributed to this report.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin vowed to remain tough on Iran’s nuclear ambitions even as the Biden administration struggles to revive a nuclear deal to lift economic sanctions if Tehran limits its uranium enrichment program.

Mr. Austin made the comments over the weekend in Bahrain at the annual Manama Dialogue, which brings together dozens of world leaders to the island kingdom off the coast of Saudi Arabia to discuss regional security issues. He sought to reassure regional leaders concerned about the U.S.’ abrupt withdrawal from Afghanistan and its strategic shift to the Indo-Pacific region.

“The United States remains committed to preventing Iran from gaining a nuclear weapon, and we remain committed to a diplomatic outcome of the nuclear issue,” he said. “But if Iran isn’t willing to engage seriously, then we will look at all the options necessary to keep the United States secure.”

The U.S. team will return to the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) talks in Vienna and negotiate in good faith, he said. But Mr. Austin added that Iran’s actions in recent months haven’t been encouraging.

“Iran’s nuclear activities are bringing us closer to the point at which returning to the JCPOA won’t recapture its benefits,” the defense secretary said.

Former President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the JCPOA in 2018, calling it a “one-sided deal” that failed to curtail Iran’s missile program and influence in the region. Tehran used that as a pretext to ramp up its uranium enrichment program, although some analysts said it had never stopped.

Since then, U.S. officials have accused Iran of being behind a number of incidents that have struck the wider Middle East, such as drone and mine attacks targeting ships transiting through the Persian Gulf region.

“Iran presents us all with serious security challenges that go beyond its nuclear program. Iran stokes tensions in this region and beyond, and that undermines peace and stability for us all,” Mr. Austin said.

Tehran hit back at the U.S. defense chief Monday, with a top government spokesman telling reporters that Mr. Austin‘s real purpose in visiting the region was not to strengthen alliances but to help out U.S. defense contractors.

The defense secretary also addressed Saudi Arabia‘s operations since 2015 against Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen. The Houthis launched drone and ballistic missile attacks against the kingdom in retaliation for Saudi Arabia’s aerial bombing campaign.

While the Biden administration has cut off support for the Saudis’ offensive operations in Yemen, Mr. Austin boasted that U.S. backing allows them to “significantly enhance” their ability to defend themselves from attacks.

“Saudi ground and air forces are now defeating nearly 90% of [unmanned aerial vehicles] and missiles fired from Yemen, and we’ll work with them until it’s 100%,” he said. “America’s commitment to helping our friends defend their sovereign space is unwavering.”