As explosions from Iran’s retaliatory assault reverberated across the United Arab Emirates last Saturday, U.S. diplomatic channels were still finalizing formal approval to evacuate non-essential staff from several missions in the Gulf. Internal memos and half a dozen State Department cables, and two sources familiar with the matter, show that requests to clear evacuations for embassies in Bahrain, Kuwait and Qatar were not sent up for authorization until hours after the United States and Israel launched their war on Iran - and in several instances approvals did not arrive until the following day.
The public disclosure that the United States was beginning to withdraw non-essential personnel from Gulf Arab states only began on Monday, three days after the first strikes. For the U.S. embassy in Riyadh, authorized departure status was approved on Tuesday - four days into the military operation - and on that very day the mission was struck by Iranian drones, causing a fire that damaged embassy facilities.
Officials familiar with the process and the internal documents characterized the delay as unusual. Historically, planned U.S. military actions have seen evacuations initiated well ahead of operations. The documents cite that, in previous campaigns, staff and U.S. citizens in affected regions had substantially more time to prepare, with at least two evacuations commencing more than a week before operations began. Yet ahead of last week’s strikes, only the embassies in Israel and Lebanon carried orders for non-essential personnel to depart.
The scale of the attack on Iran - described in the documents as the largest U.S. military operation in the Middle East since 2003 - placed heavy demands on officials from the United States and other countries with nationals in the region. Lawmakers, former diplomats and people involved in the evacuation process told State Department officials and other interlocutors that the United States appeared unusually slow to mobilize contingency plans for its own personnel and for thousands of Americans seeking help to leave the area.
Tommy Pigott, the State Department’s principal deputy spokesperson, said hundreds of personnel were engaged in the effort to assist Americans seeking to depart. In a statement, he said, "We are working 24/7 and have contingency plans ready to go and implement when needed, including the ability to immediately activate the task force, which was done here."
How approvals and alerts unfolded
According to the internal memos and cables, and to multiple people familiar with the matter, the formal approval process for several embassies lagged the unfolding attacks. That delay meant that while some missions were already under fire from Iranian strikes on Saturday, the administrative steps required to authorize departures were still being finalized.
Sources said part of the uneven response stemmed from contingency planning being confined to a small group of officials prior to the start of hostilities. In at least one instance, those assisting stranded Americans learned that Washington was offering charter flights not through formal channels but via a social media post from a senior Trump administration official, according to two people familiar with the situation. One person said, "No directive came from anywhere." Pigott countered that announcements from the task force created to handle the crisis and the information on charter flights were coordinated with relevant officials.
In another case, an alert urging Americans to leave the region was first posted on social media rather than coming through standard State Department channels. Mora Namdar, the top State Department official for consular affairs, published a post on X on Monday urging Americans in 14 Middle East countries to depart and noting that the U.S. was working to facilitate charter flights. Because that message had been drafted outside usual channels, some State Department staff were surprised and subsequently had to update the department’s formal travel advisory system, which many American companies and organizations rely on to guide overseas personnel.
Charter operations, hotline glitches and individual accounts
As of Saturday, the State Department reported it had completed "over a dozen charter flights and has safely evacuated thousands of Americans" from the Middle East. The statement did not specify the departure points for those flights. One cable dated March 6 indicates that a flight left Dubai bound for Washington on Friday carrying 182 embassy personnel and their families, plus 51 private U.S. citizens; that flight was only the second charter to depart from that country, according to the cable. Additional flights were scheduled following that departure.
When pressed about whether detailed evacuation plans for citizens in the 14 countries had been finalized prior to the start of hostilities, a State Department official who briefed reporters offered a general reply. Speaking on the condition of anonymity, the official said, "I wouldn’t say that specifically. What I would say is, we always have contingency plans, and we’re always ready to assist Americans. That’s what I would say to that question."
The Department also said on Friday that it had assisted 13,000 Americans who reached out requesting help to depart the region.
Not all callers felt reassured by the official guidance. Novelist and filmmaker Mohana Rajakumar, located in Doha at the time, called the hotline that U.S. officials told stranded citizens to use. She reported that a recorded message advised callers not to rely on government assistance to leave. Rajakumar described the reaction among Americans she knows: "I can tell you every WhatsApp group that I’m in with Americans, nobody feels that way. Everyone is asking why didn’t they tell us to leave given they knew they were going to do this? Why didn’t we have the option to leave?" Officials said the recorded message was later updated.
Implications for operational readiness and communications
The sequence of delayed approvals, reliance on social media for critical alerts and uneven communication channels highlighted gaps in how contingency operations were executed as hostilities began. Internal cables and sources point to a disjunction between planning and timely execution in a fast-moving crisis environment, leaving some citizens and mission staff without clear, immediate guidance.
Officials insist that a large, around-the-clock effort was activated to assist Americans and that contingency plans existed to be implemented as required. Yet the timeline captured in memos and cables shows approvals for several evacuations trailing the opening hours of military action, and public announcements to withdraw non-essential staff did not start until multiple days into the conflict.
As the State Department continues to manage charter flights and consular assistance, questions remain about the pace and coordination of its response to a rapidly developing security crisis that put both diplomatic facilities and U.S. citizens at risk.