🇺🇸🇮🇷 BREAKING: US intelligence warns Iran's lethal plots against Americans abroad have reached "advanced stages," per Axios.
In an unclassified Oct. 23 memo to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, copied to CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton wrote that Iran has "substantially increased" efforts to target US government personnel in the Middle East and certain other countries.
The memo is short on detail. It does not name targets, describe the plots or identify countries outside the Middle East. Its main message is procedural: the intelligence is relevant to more State Department staff than are currently cleared to see it. Clayton said it has already gone to senior staff on Rubio's team and pledged to downgrade as much as possible so it can be shared more widely.
It lands as Washington thins out its diplomatic footprint. Earlier this week, the State Department ordered family members and non-essential staff out of the Riyadh embassy and the Jeddah and Dhahran consulates. On Friday it ordered cuts at embassies in the UAE, Lebanon, Qatar and Jordan. A US official said: "We decided that due to the threat of Houthi attacks and Iranian terror plots we need to reduce our footprint and keep only essential staff."
Officials also worry the Houthis could widen attacks beyond Saudi Arabia, and that renewed US and Israeli strikes on Iran are possible.
Washington has not publicly detailed the plots, so the public picture rests on a memo that says a lot about urgency and very little about specifics.
#Iran #USNews #MiddleEast #NationalSecurity #BreakingNews
In an unclassified Oct. 23 memo to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, copied to CIA Director John Ratcliffe, Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton wrote that Iran has "substantially increased" efforts to target US government personnel in the Middle East and certain other countries.
The memo is short on detail. It does not name targets, describe the plots or identify countries outside the Middle East. Its main message is procedural: the intelligence is relevant to more State Department staff than are currently cleared to see it. Clayton said it has already gone to senior staff on Rubio's team and pledged to downgrade as much as possible so it can be shared more widely.
It lands as Washington thins out its diplomatic footprint. Earlier this week, the State Department ordered family members and non-essential staff out of the Riyadh embassy and the Jeddah and Dhahran consulates. On Friday it ordered cuts at embassies in the UAE, Lebanon, Qatar and Jordan. A US official said: "We decided that due to the threat of Houthi attacks and Iranian terror plots we need to reduce our footprint and keep only essential staff."
Officials also worry the Houthis could widen attacks beyond Saudi Arabia, and that renewed US and Israeli strikes on Iran are possible.
Washington has not publicly detailed the plots, so the public picture rests on a memo that says a lot about urgency and very little about specifics.
#Iran #USNews #MiddleEast #NationalSecurity #BreakingNews
