U.S. diplomats faced a fast-moving logistical strain as the United States and Israel struck Iran and the conflict widened, with the State Department taking steps that affected embassies and consular operations across parts of the Middle East. The department said it had closed several embassies to the public, shut down at least one consulate, and ordered the departure of embassy staff and families from multiple countries, while also advising Americans in 14 countries to leave the region immediately despite widespread flight cancellations.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio told reporters that more than 9,000 Americans had safely returned from the Middle East since the weekend. He also described a recurring problem during departures: “We’ve had a couple instances in which we have planes in the air, and on the way, and unfortunately, the airspace gets closed, and they have to turn back around,” he said, as lawmakers were briefed on the latest developments.
The department said it was working through demand from Americans seeking to leave or to understand how to depart, and Rubio said 1,500 people had actually requested help in leaving. Dylan Johnson, assistant secretary of state for public affairs, said on X that the department had been in contact with nearly 3,000 Americans who wanted to leave the region or were asking for information on departing.
The State Department said charter flights were being arranged from Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and that in countries where airports or airspace was closed it was organizing land travel to countries where flights were available, including Egypt and Oman. The department’s guidance and reduced onsite capacity, however, also meant that consular services were unavailable in many places and that reductions in personnel limited official engagements with partner and allied governments during the war, including in Bahrain, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Pakistan, Qatar and Saudi Arabia.
AP reported that confusion about the planning for possible military action and the impact on Americans’ travel and safety prompted questions from outside observers. Shawn VanDiver, president of AfghanEvac, said that if people were being told to leave without a workable option, “that suggests one of two things: The system is not being activated, or the system has atrophied,” in comments provided in response to the situation.
VanDiver also pointed to the scale of past evacuations, saying that during the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan in 2021, the Biden administration organized the evacuation of 121,000 people “in a matter of days.” He added, “Crisis response cannot be partisan,” and said it must “survive transitions” while being “staffed, exercised, and protected,” framing the oversight question as whether “the post-Afghanistan crisis response architecture [was] sustained, or has it been weakened?”
The State Department did not immediately respond to a query about its planning for staffing and assistance for U.S. citizens in the event of conflict with Iran. The cluster also noted that the U.S. government cannot compel American citizens to leave any country, while in rare circumstances it can make it illegal for passports to be used for travel to a destination; North Korea is the only place for which such restrictions exist in the current account.
In the background, AP said the State Department has declined to estimate how many Americans are in the region because U.S. citizens are not required to report their presence abroad, and it warned that many people do not heed travel advice or may be unable to leave. AP reported that tens of thousands of U.S. citizens, including many dual nationals, are believed to live in Israel, Lebanon, Egypt and Iran.