Summary: The State Department faces criticism from veteran diplomats and stranded travelers for its allegedly slow and inadequate assistance to Americans in the Middle East following the outbreak of conflict with Iran. While the department has initiated charter flights and ground transport, critics argue its response was delayed and that it failed to issue sufficient pre-conflict travel warnings despite predictable regional airspace closures. State Department officials defend their actions, citing a task force that has assisted thousands.
Main Topics Covered:
1. Criticism of the State Department's emergency response and evacuation efforts.
2. The department's defense of its actions and provided statistics.
3. Accusations of failure to provide adequate pre-conflict travel advisories.
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State Department Is Accused of Slow Assistance for Stranded Americans
Many veteran diplomats faulted the State Department for its response after the attacks in Iran began, and for its actions beforehand.
The State Department is battling accusations from diplomats and travelers who say the Trump administration endangered U.S. citizens in the Middle East by beginning a war against Iran without adequate plans for helping Americans leave the region.
The State Department began evacuating Americans from the region by charter flight on Wednesday and says it has communicated with thousands of U.S. citizens. But veteran diplomats and exasperated travelers said it had done too little, too slowly to help people stranded by flight cancellations and airspace closures in the region.
Since the United States and Israel began attacking on Saturday, Iran has fired volleys of drones and missiles at its neighbors, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates. Several countries in the region have closed their airspace and shut down airports as a result.
Until midweek, the State Department had mainly provided stranded travelers with basic information about security conditions and commercial travel options via a telephone hotline and text messages. Before Wednesday, desperate people calling the hotline got an automated message that said the U.S. government could not help get them out of the region.
Later, the department chartered some buses to drive Americans from countries with no air travel to ones where they could catch flights. It is unclear how many such buses have been chartered.
In a statement on Thursday, Dylan Johnson, a State Department spokesman, said that “charter flight and ground transportation operations are underway and will continue to ramp up with additional flights and ground transports taking place today.”
The department said on Wednesday that its first charter flight had left the region for the United States. But the statement did not say how many more flights might be underway or in the works.
Many veteran diplomats faulted the State Department not only for its response after the attacks in Iran began, but also for its actions beforehand.
The department did not issue official alerts ahead of the strikes advising Americans that the risk of travel in the region might soon increase. Given that U.S. forces been amassing over the winter and President Trump was warning of a possible attack, such notices would not have threatened any military element of surprise, diplomats said.
“This war started at a time of our choosing,” said Yael Lempert, a career diplomat who served as ambassador to Jordan in the Biden administration. “It should have come as no surprise that airspace would close, and commercial flight options would be curtailed.”
Ms. Lempert, who helped organize the evacuation of Americans from Libya in 2011, noted that the Iranian strikes against U.S. partner countries were a predictable contingency and that airspace in the region had closed in previous instances of conflict with Iran over the past two years.
“It’s stunning there were no orders for authorized departure for nonessential U.S. government employees and family members in almost all the affected diplomatic missions in the region — nor public recommendations to American citizens to depart — until days into the war,” added Ms. Lempert, now a vice president at the Middle East Institute.
State Department officials firmly defended their response to the crisis, saying on Thursday morning that a round-the-clock task force had assisted more than 10,000 Americans abroad and that nearly 20,000 Americans had returned safely to the United States from the Middle East since the conflict began. Thousands more Americans have left the region for other destinations, officials said.
But critics called the numbers hollow. The count of Americans who received “assistance,” for instance, included people who were given information such as “security guidance” that some found lacking. And the 20,000 who have returned to the United States include those who found their way home without any government help.
Linda Thomas-Greenfield, a retired career diplomat who served as ambassador to the United Nations during the Biden administration, posted on social media that she was “shocked” by the department’s “failure to support Americans abroad.”
The American Foreign Service Association, the union that represents Foreign Service officers worldwide, released a scathing statement on Wednesday highlighting the mass layoffs, budget cuts and early retirements since Mr. Trump took office last January.
“This crisis exposes real gaps in America’s diplomatic readiness,” the union said, adding that the department’s “capacity has been weakened by the loss of experienced personnel with critical regional, crisis management, consular, and language expertise, including specialists in Farsi and Arabic — skills that are indispensable in moments like this.”
The group also noted that Egypt, Iraq, Kuwait, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates all currently lack a Senate-confirmed U.S. ambassador. It said that staff reductions under Secretary of State Marco Rubio “have left many of these embassies and the offices that support them critically understaffed.”
Some current and former diplomats expressed particular concern about a message sent by the leader of the department’s bureau of consular affairs, whose stated mission is “to protect the lives and serve the interests of American citizens” abroad during emergencies and disasters. The bureau has been led since late December by Mora Namdar, a career lawyer with roughly one year of State Department experience, most of it as an acting official in the department’s Middle East bureau.
Some Americans in the region reported feeling a sense of panic on Monday after Ms. Namdar posted on social media imploring U.S. citizens “to DEPART NOW” from 14 countries in the region “due to serious safety risks.” The message said that travelers should use “available commercial transportation,” even though commercial flights from many of those countries had already become scarce or nonexistent.
Mr. Trump and many of his top officials fiercely criticized the Biden administration for what they called a failure to plan for the orderly evacuation of American citizens and Afghan allies as Kabul fell to the Taliban in August 2021. Biden officials blamed staffing problems caused by the coronavirus pandemic and the Afghan government’s unexpectedly swift collapse.
Jan Fluitt-Dupuy, a retiree from Washington State who was stranded in Abu Dhabi along with her husband, Eddie Dupuy, said the State Department had for days given them “totally useless advice,” including that they should leave by commercial means when the region’s airspace was closed.
After days of calling the State Department hotline and their congressional representatives, the couple said on Thursday that they might have secured a seat on a U.S. government flight home. Still, the timing of any flight remained unclear, and they feared that “an unusually robust barrage of attacks” audible from their hotel room might close the airspace once again, Ms. Fluitt-Dupuy said.
Christine Chung and Gabe Castro-Root contributed reporting.
Michael Crowley covers the State Department and U.S. foreign policy for The Times. He has reported from nearly three dozen countries and often travels with the secretary of state.
Edward Wong reports on global affairs, U.S. foreign policy and the State Department for The Times.
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