WASHINGTON — Iran has sharply ramped up its effort to go after American personnel outside the United States, and some of its plans to kill U.S. citizens have moved into late stages in the Middle East and in other countries, Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton warned Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a memo sent Friday.
The one-page memo is unclassified, and a U.S. official vouched for it. It does not name targets, say which countries outside the Middle East are involved or indicate whether any attack is close. According to the memo, intelligence agencies will try to lower the secrecy level on as much of the underlying material as they can so they can pass to State Department staff what officials need to know. CIA Director John Ratcliffe received a copy.
The warning lands as American diplomats are already being thinned out across the region. Earlier in the week the State Department ordered non-emergency government workers and their families out of Saudi Arabia, which has come under missile fire from the Iran-backed Houthi movement in Yemen. The department later said that departure order covers Saudi Arabia only and called talk of a wider shutdown across the Gulf inaccurate. Other posts in the region are running with fewer people under a restricted operations status.
A U.S. official said embassy staffing is reviewed constantly as new security information comes in, and that both the Houthi missile threat and Iranian plots against U.S. officials are shaping those choices.
The memo also comes as President Donald Trump weighs whether to order another round of military strikes on Iran if Tehran does not reach a deal with Washington. Americans traveling in or through the Middle East have been under a renewed State Department warning since late September.
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