Washington: The State Department has begun evacuating nonessential diplomats and their families from the US embassy in Israel as hostilities between Israel and Iran intensify and President Donald Trump warns of the possibility of getting directly involved in the conflict.
A government plane evacuated a number of diplomats and family members who had asked to leave the country Wednesday, said two US officials who spoke on condition of anonymity to describe sensitive diplomatic movements.
There was no indication of how many diplomats and family members departed on the flight or how many may have left by land routes to Jordan or Egypt.
The flight came shortly before US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee announced on X that the embassy was making plans for evacuations by plane and ship for private American citizens.
Hours after Huckabee’s tweet, however, the State Department’s Bureau of Consular Affairs tweeted that “we have no announcement about assisting private US citizens to depart at this time” from Israel or the Palestinian territories.
The State Department didn’t explain the discrepancy but said in response to questions that it is considering all options and “will alert the US citizen community if there is additional information to share regarding departure options”.
It added that it is providing information about routes out of Israel to Americans who want to leave “by their own means” and urged them to go as soon as it’s safe to do so.
Of the diplomats, the State Department said earlier that “given the ongoing situation and as part of the embassy’s authorised departure status, mission personnel have begun departing Israel through a variety of means”.
“Authorised departure” means that nonessential staff and the families of all personnel are eligible to leave at government expense.
The evacuations, comments from the White House and shifting of American military aircraft and warships into and around the Middle East have heightened the possibility of deepening US involvement in a conflict that threatens to spill into a wider regional war.
Trump has issued increasingly pointed warnings about the US joining Israel in striking at Iran’s nuclear programme, saying Wednesday that he doesn’t want to carry out a US strike on the Islamic Republic but suggesting he is ready to act if it’s necessary.
The State Department also has steadily ramped up its warnings to American citizens in Israel and throughout the region, including in Iraq.
Last week, ahead of Israel’s first strikes on Iran, the department and the Pentagon put out notices announcing that the US embassy in Baghdad had ordered all nonessential personnel to leave and that the Defence Department had “authorised the voluntary departure of military dependents from locations across the Middle East.
Those warnings have increased as the conflict has intensified, with the embassy in Jerusalem authorising the departure of nonessential staff and families over the weekend and ordering remaining personnel to shelter in place until further notice.
The embassy has been closed since Monday and will remain shut through Friday.
