US reduces staffing at four Middle East embassies after Iran threat warning

The US State Department is reducing staffing at its embassies in Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates following an intelligence warning about alleged Iranian efforts to target American personnel. The four Middle East embassies will remain open, the Associated Press reported, but the changes will reduce staffing at missions already operating with restricted personnel.

In a memo sent on Friday, October 23, Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton told Secretary of State Marco Rubio that intelligence agencies had received information indicating Iran had ‘substantially increased efforts to target U.S. personnel’. Clayton wrote that alleged lethal plots against US citizens had reached ‘advanced stages’ in the Middle East and certain other countries, according to the AP and BBC. Those are US intelligence assessments; the memo does not identify specific targets or countries where the alleged plots are under way, or say whether attacks are imminent, CBS News reported.

Why the four embassies are reducing staff

A US official told the BBC that the threat of Houthi attacks and alleged Iranian plots against US officials were informing staffing decisions at embassies designated for restricted operations. The official said staffing was continually assessed against new information about the security environment. The AP said all four missions already had smaller personnel footprints under that designation; the reports did not give a number of people affected by the latest reductions.

The BBC also reported an earlier order this week for non-emergency US embassy staff to leave Saudi Arabia. That was a separate action from the reductions at the four embassies named by the AP. Clayton’s memo was marked unclassified, the BBC reported, and he said he was working to downgrade further intelligence so Rubio could share it with State Department personnel.