President Donald Trump’s haphazard attack on Iran is creating chaos all across the Middle East, and Americans are stuck there.
According to Trump, the administration didn’t evacuate U.S. nationals from the Middle East because everything just happened too fast: "It happened all very quickly. … I thought we were going to have a situation where we were going to be attacked. They were getting ready to attack Israel, they were getting ready to attack others."
Even if we pretend that the administration wasn’t planning this for weeks, it’s shameful and absurd that there was never a plan to protect U.S. nationals in the area. And it’s not a small number of them: The BBC estimates that between 500,000 and 1 million U.S. nationals live in the Middle East.
The State Department has simply told those Americans that they need to use “commercial means” to get out of 14 countries: Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, the occupied West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, United Arab Emirates, and Yemen.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio, shown in January.
The ever-hapless Secretary of State Marco Rubio did not exactly instill confidence about U.S. evacuation efforts when he went on television Tuesday to burble about how TV networks should help get a message out. Unfortunately, the message was not about how Americans can leave the Middle East. Rather, it was to tell people the State Department needs their contact information. However, according to NOTUS, people who try to contact the department are greeted with an automatic message saying, “Please do not rely on the U.S. government for assisted departure or evacuation. At this time, there are currently no United States evacuation points.”
In other words, Good luck, babe—find your own way home. Too bad that wide swaths of airspace in the Middle East are closed, and that at least 11,000 flights have been canceled since this past Saturday, affecting over a million passengers. There’s no world in which half a million Americans can just hop a commercial flight and get home.
The Trump administration has already closed three embassies—in Kuwait, Lebanon, and Saudi Arabia—and told people to stay away, which leads to the obvious question of “Stay away where?” Odies Turner, a Dallas-based chef trapped in Qatar, explained the bind that people are in: “They say ‘Get out,’ but how do you expect us to get out when airspaces are closed? They just have been canceling every flight. I want to go home.”
The State Department won’t answer whether it has a plan to organize evacuation flights or anything else that would get Americans out of there. The U.S. Embassy in Israel told Americans there that they were on their own, saying it “is not in a position at this time to evacuate or directly assist Americans in departing Israel.” That said, it did provide some information “as you make your own security plans.”
Smoke rises up behind Azadi following a U.S.-Israeli military strike in Tehran, Iran, on March 3.
The Trump administration is the one that was supposed to make security plans, not individual Americans.
The State Department’s official effort thus far seems to be to create a task force with the vague goals of helping “assist American citizens and support diplomatic efforts.” Notably, that is not a plan to get people out.
U.S. efforts are in stark contrast to other countries. Italy sent diplomats and military police to the Middle East and organized bus transport to Oman, where planes chartered by the Italian government will get its citizens out.
France is also preparing charter flights, while Belgium is considering both commercial and military flights to get its people out of the Middle East. The United Kingdom is coordinating getting British nationals out via British Airways and chartered flights.
The European Union has also stepped in to coordinate with airlines, shipping companies, and governments to support the evacuation and repatriation of European citizens.
Meanwhile, Americans have nothing.
“Nothing” also seems to be the amount of thought Trump gave to what would happen in Iran after killing Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Now, there’s a power vacuum in the nation, and it doesn’t look like Trump has an interest in fixing that: “Most of the people we had in mind are dead. Now we have another group, they may be dead also, based on reports. So you have a third wave coming. Pretty soon we’re not going to know anybody.”
Yeah, it is kind of tough to install a new leader if you keep killing all the viable candidates, and this turn of events certainly doesn’t seem like it will help get Americans out of the area.
The Trump administration’s failures here are putting Americans abroad in acute danger, but it just doesn’t care. You’re on your own, folks.
