Washington: The United States is drawing down the presence of staffers who are not deemed essential to operations in the Middle East and their loved ones due to the potential for regional unrest, the State Department and military said on Wednesday. The State Department said it has ordered the departure of all nonessential personnel from the US Embassy in Baghdad based on its latest review and a commitment “to keeping Americans safe, both at home and abroad.” The embassy already had been on limited staffing, and the order will not affect a large number of personnel.
The department, however, also is authorising the departure of nonessential personnel and family members from Bahrain and Kuwait. That gives them the option of leaving those countries at government expense and with government assistance.
Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth “has authorised the voluntary departure of military dependents from locations” across the region, US Central Command said in a statement. The command “is monitoring the developing tension in the Middle East.” Speaking at the Kennedy Center in Washington on Wednesday evening, President Donald Trump said, “They are being moved out, because it could be a dangerous place, and we’ll see what happens. We’ve given notice to move out, and we’ll see what happens.” Tensions in the region have been rising in recent days as talks between the US and Iran over its rapidly advancing nuclear programme appear to have hit an impasse. The talks seek to limit Iran’s nuclear programme in exchange for the lifting of some of the crushing economic sanctions that the US has imposed on the Islamic Republic. Iran insists its nuclear programme is peaceful.
The next round of talks — the sixth — had been tentatively scheduled for this weekend in Oman, according to two US officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss diplomatic matters. However, those officials said on Wednesday that it looked increasingly unlikely that the talks would happen.
Trump, who has previously said Israel or the US could carry out airstrikes targeting Iranian nuclear facilities if negotiations failed, gave a less-than-optimistic view about reaching a deal with Iran, telling the New York Post’s “Pod Force One” podcast that he was “getting more and more less confident about” a deal.
“They seem to be delaying, and I think that’s a shame. I’m less confident now than I would have been a couple of months ago. Something happened to them,” he said in the interview recorded on Monday and released on Wednesday.
Iran’s mission to the UN posted on social media that “threats of overwhelming force won’t change the facts.” “Iran is not seeking a nuclear weapon, and US militarism only fuels instability,” the Iranian mission wrote.
Iranian Defence Minister General Aziz Nasirzadeh separately told journalists on Wednesday that he hoped talks with the US would yield results, though Tehran stood ready to respond.
“If conflict is imposed on us, the opponent’s casualties will certainly be more than ours, and in that case, America must leave the region, because all its bases are within our reach,” he said. “We have access to them, and we will target all of them in the host countries without hesitation.” Meanwhile, the Board of Governors at the International Atomic Energy Agency was potentially set to vote on a measure to censure Iran. That could set in motion an effort to snap back United Nations sanctions on Iran via a measure in Tehran’s 2015 nuclear deal with world powers that is still active until October. Trump withdrew from that agreement in his first term.
Earlier on Wednesday, a statement from the United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations centre, a Mideast-based effort overseen by the British navy, issued a warning to ships in the region that it “has been made aware of increased tensions within the region which could lead to an escalation of military activity having a direct impact on mariners.” It urged caution in the Persian Gulf, the Gulf of Oman and the Strait of Hormuz. It did not name Iran, though those waterways have seen Iranian ship seizures and attacks in the past.
The top US military officer for the Middle East, Gen Erik Kurilla, was scheduled to testify before the Senate Armed Services Committee on Thursday, but that testimony has now been postponed, according to the committee’s website. The Pentagon has not commented on the postponement.
Meanwhile, Iraq’s state-run Iraqi News Agency said in a statement attributed to an unnamed government official that the evacuation of some nonessential employees from the US Embassy in Baghdad was part of “procedures related to the US diplomatic presence in a number of Middle Eastern countries, not just Iraq” and that Iraqi officials “have not recorded any security indicators that warrant an evacuation.” “We reiterate that all security indicators and briefings support the escalating assessments of stability and the restoration of internal security,” the statement said.
