Here we go again: "Heightened security risks" in the Middle East have Iraq embassy staff and dependents preparing to evacuate the country, according to State Department officials. A Pentagon official said that SecDef Pete Hegseth also "authorized the voluntary departure of military dependents from locations across the Middle East."
Reuters's sources "did not specify which security risks had prompted the decision and reports of the potential evacuation pushed up oil prices by more than 4%."
"The State Department regularly reviews American personnel abroad and this decision was made as a result of a recent review," is all that White House spokeswoman Anna Kelly had to say about it today. But sources told the UK Independent that the State Department also authorized "the departure of nonessential personnel and family members from Bahrain and Kuwait."
"Authorized" in this case means that State or Defense will provide and pay for transportation, if requested. It isn't like an embassy spouse isn't allowed to travel without permission.
Another anonymous U.S. official told the Independent that the Pentagon is on alert to support any potential bugout: "The State Department is set to have an ordered departure for (the) U.S. embassy in Baghdad. The intent is to do it through commercial means, but the U.S. military is standing by if help is requested."
Well, that doesn't look very promising, but it's also probably not the end of the world.
Probably!
Terrorism? Is Iran about to try some new stupid thing? Nobody who knows will say, and I won't play any conjecture games. I will note, however, that the administration's nuclear talks with Iran stand at an impasse, and that Trump met with his national security team — notably without Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard — and other top officials at Camp David this weekend to discuss the Iran situation at length.
That said, today's news isn't exactly unprecedented.
Our embassy in Iraq has undergone similar personnel drawdowns and evacuations since at least 2014, when ISIL's terrorist army threatened the city from the north.
There was another big bugout in early 2019 during heightened tensions with Iran, and again later that year following President Donald Trump's 2019 drone-strike assassination of Iranian Gen. Qasem Soleimani.
And Another Thing: If anybody deserved a drone up the wazoo, it was Soleimani in one of the best-earned drone strikes ever. I know some readers here have an almost knee-jerk reaction against any foreign "adventurism" or whatever, but there are some very bad guys in need of killing, and Soleimani was among the worst of them. Trump made the right call.
So while today's news isn't the most comforting stuff you'll read today, pulling our people out of various Middle East embassies doesn't mean that war is about to break out — aside from the war in Gaza, the civil war in Yemen, whatever it is you want to call the situation in Syria, Turkey's war against various Kurdish groups, etc.
Come to think of it, it's almost a miracle we bother having embassy people in those places at all. If Trump could even the score with Soleimani by remote control, wouldn't it be a lot safer (and less expensive) to wage most of our Middle East diplomacy via Zoom calls?
I'm mostly kidding, of course, but it's no laughing matter to the families and staff constantly going on alert. Wash, rinse, evacuate — in the Middle East, the cycle never ends.
Recommended: What the Hell Was That Tulsi Gabbard Video About?
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