Sharon Zhang
Truthout / February 27, 2026
Meanwhile, reports say that US intelligence assessments find that Trump’s claims about Iran’s missiles are untrue.
The U.S. embassy in Israel told its staff on Friday to leave the country if they wish to do so, and quickly. The instruction comes as the U.S. has repeatedly threatened to strike Iran — despite reports finding that the Trump administration’s accusations against the country are unsupported by U.S. intelligence.
In a staff-wide email, U.S. Ambassador Mike Huckabee instructed employees that “Those wishing to take [authorized departure] should do so TODAY,” reports say.
“While there may be outbound flights over the coming days, there may not be,” he warned, telling employees to take any available flight to a location that will allow them to then travel to Washington, D.C. Staff’s “first priority” in booking flights, he said, should be “getting expeditiously out of country.”
Huckabee sent the email after a night of phone calls and emails, and said that the authorization is out of “an abundance of caution,” and that staff shouldn’t panic.
The email comes amid weeks of U.S. threats against Iran and a historically large build-up of U.S. military might surrounding the country. If the U.S. strikes Iran, the country may retaliate by striking sites in Israel, as well as the numerous American military positions in the Middle East.
Days before the U.S.’s strikes on Iran last June, the U.S. evacuated some embassy staffers from the Middle East, and organized flights for U.S. citizens to leave Israel. China advised its citizens to evacuate Iran as soon as possible on Friday, Chinese state news reported. The U.S. has reportedly moved hundreds of personnel out of its Al Udeid base in Qatar, which may also be a target for retaliation.
Negotiations between the U.S. and Iran are ongoing, with the U.S. seemingly threatening untold violence if Iran doesn’t accede to its demands.
The U.S.’s threats are based on unfounded evidence, reports say. Reuters reported Thursday that Trump and his administration’s claims that Tehran is close to developing a weapon that could reach the U.S. are completely false, according to U.S. intelligence assessments.
During his State of the Union address on Tuesday, Trump claimed that Iran is developing missiles that could “soon reach the United States.” But reports find that this is a lie or, at best, a great exaggeration of intelligence assessments.
Reuters reported this week that U.S. intelligence assessments found in 2025 that Iran wouldn’t be able to develop such a weapon until 2035, and nothing has changed since that assessment.
Further, U.S. officials have been lying for decades that Iran is close to possessing nuclear weapons or long-range missiles. No such thing has come to pass, but that hasn’t stopped the U.S. from provoking war. Intelligence assessments also found, ahead of the U.S.’s strikes on Iran last June, that Iran was years away from being able to develop a nuclear weapon at that point — and, moreover, that the country was not actively pursuing one.
Israel may be a particularly dangerous place if military action is taken, as reports have said that U.S. attacks against Iran would come with support from the Israeli government.
Some of President Donald Trump’s top advisers have evidently argued in backdoor conversations that the U.S. should urge Israel to strike Iran first, Politico reported this week. The rationale is that this would help drum up support within the U.S. for strikes — which polls find are very unpopular — with one source saying, “the politics are a lot better if the Israelis go first and alone and the Iranians retaliate against us.”
Iran and the U.S. were unable to strike a deal in indirect talks this week. Iran’s foreign minister, Abbas Araghchi, said after the latest round of negotiations on Thursday that progress has been “good.” Omani Foreign Minister Badr bin Hamad Al Busaidi said that there has been “significant progress” and that talks will continue next week.
Details about the negotiations are unclear. The Trump administration has repeatedly said that it is demanding that Iran forgo any uranium enrichment at all. However, Araghchi said last week that U.S. officials have not actually asked for that in negotiations.
The Iranian government’s position is that it must be able to maintain uranium enrichment for civilian purposes, and it has vowed to “under no circumstances ever develop a nuclear weapon.” Araghchi has reportedly called the U.S.’s demands “excessive” and has said that they must be dropped in order for negotiations to be successful.
The Trump administration has openly contradicted itself, meanwhile, on its reasoning for military action. Last week, Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff claimed in an interview on Fox News that Iran’s uranium enrichment level is at “60 percent.” The country, he alleged, is “probably a week away from having industrial-grade bombmaking material.”
But Secretary of State Marco Rubio has said that Iran is “not enriching right now, but they’re trying to get to the point where they ultimately can,” meaning that Iran is much more than a week away from a nuclear bomb — something that the country has sworn off of anyway. Meanwhile, the U.S. has over 5,000 nuclear warheads in its stockpile.
Sharon Zhang is a news writer at Truthout covering politics, climate and labour
