The U.S. embassy in Israel is unexpectedly closed as Americans are trying to flee from the ongoing "security situation" with Iran.
The State Department closed the embassy in Jerusalem, along with consular sections in that city and Tel Aviv, and CNN's Clarissa Ward reported from Israel that Trump administration officials have provided few answers to Americans trying to get back to the U.S. as the president considers escalating hostilities.
"I had actually been hearing from some Americans who were stranded here and who were feeling very frustrated that they were not able to get out, essentially," Ward reported from Tel Aviv. "Now we have a tweet from the U.S. ambassador to Israel, Mike Huckabee, who says, 'Urgent notice: U.S. citizens wanting to leave Israel, the U.S. embassy is working on evacuation flights and cruise ship departures.'"
"Now, we know that the U.S. embassy is closed today, tomorrow and Friday," Ward added. "No specific reason has been given for that, but needless to say, it's, of course, fueling speculation that if potentially the U.S. or if president Trump makes the decision to intervene in Iran, that that could then pose a threat, potentially for security personnel and anyone working at the embassy, and obviously unusual for the embassy to be closed for three days at a time like this, when there are so many Americans here who are trying to get out of the country."
Israeli leaders haven't commented on whether they expect the U.S. to join their military operation, but they have started to relax the security posture as what defense minister Israel Katz calls a message of victory to Iran.
"Starting tonight, they will start to reopen the economy, which basically means that people will be able to go to work, for the most part," Ward reported. "More stores will be able to be open, and they said they will begin a sort of phased approach, essentially, of getting back to some semblance of normalcy. I want to add, though, that this is still very much not a normal situation. We haven't had any alerts or sirens yet today, but throughout the night we had multiple alerts, roughly 30 missiles came over from Iran, 30 missiles the night before. That's down a lot from 200 missiles on Friday night, but still a very fluid situation."
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