The US State Department on Saturday updated travel advisories for more than a dozen countries across the Gulf and Middle East, including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Iraq and Israel, citing an increased threat from Iran-aligned Houthis, Reuters reported. The advisories are addressed to US citizens, but they are closely watched around the region as an official signal of how Washington judges the security risk.
Source: Reuters
Reports summarising the updated advisories said the travel levels themselves were not raised: Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Yemen remain at Level 4, “do not travel”, while Saudi Arabia, Israel and several Gulf states remain at Level 3, “reconsider travel”. Officials cited by Reuters linked the updates to the threat from Iran-aligned Houthi forces, whose attacks on Saudi Arabia and on commercial shipping in the Strait of Hormuz have intensified on one front of the nearly eight-month-old regional conflict that followed the Iran war.
Source: Reuters / Bazaar Daily News (citing Reuters and AP)
The Saturday updates follow an unclassified memo dated October 23 from Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, seen by Reuters and first reported by Axios. “Specifically, through various channels, we have received intelligence that Iran has substantially increased efforts to target US personnel,” Clayton wrote, adding that “the lethal plotting efforts by the Iranians against US citizens have reached advanced stages in both the Middle East and certain other countries.” CIA Director John Ratcliffe was copied on the memo. These are US intelligence claims about Iran; Tehran has not responded to the memo in the reporting.
Source: Reuters
Earlier in the week, the State Department ordered non-emergency government employees and their family members to leave US diplomatic missions in Saudi Arabia, and US officials told Reuters it planned to withdraw family members from a number of other missions in the region, with staffing also reduced at embassies including in Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar and the UAE. Earlier Awaaz Punjab reporting covered that embassy drawdown and the Clayton memo in detail.
Source: Reuters
Why it matters beyond US citizens: the Gulf states named in the advisories — Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the UAE among them — are home to lakhs of Indian workers, including large Punjabi communities, and handle a large share of the region's flights and remittances. US advisories do not apply to Indian nationals and do not by themselves change conditions on the ground, but a widening US warning footprint is one of the clearest public signals of how serious Washington considers the Houthi and Iran-linked threat to be this week.
Source: Reuters
Earlier this month, sources told Reuters that Iran was preparing a more forceful response if the United States resumes large-scale military attacks on its territory. There was no immediate public response from Iran or the Houthis to Saturday's advisory updates in the reporting.