NYT: Iranian officials call US diplomats 'fair game' as Trump weighs strike or deal
Two Iranian officials told The New York Times that Tehran is preparing to target US diplomats. Washington is cutting embassy staff in four countries. Trump says new strikes and a deal are both possible.
Archive image · Photo: U.S. Department of State / Wikimedia Commons, Public domain (cropped and resized)
Two senior Iranian officials, one of them a member of the Revolutionary Guard, told The New York Times that Tehran is preparing to target American diplomats and government personnel. Citing the deaths of dozens of Iranian officials and some family members in U.S. and Israeli strikes, Americans are "fair game," one of them said. It remains unclear whether Tehran has the operational capability to carry out such attacks, and U.S. officials cautioned that its ambitions abroad have often exceeded its capabilities.
The State Department is reducing staff at U.S. embassies in Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, according to the reports, after nonessential personnel and families were ordered out of Saudi Arabia earlier in the week. The moves follow a memo from Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton to Secretary of State Marco Rubio warning that Iran has "substantially increased" efforts to target Americans abroad.
President Donald Trump on Saturday left open whether he would order new strikes, The Associated Press reported: "There's a possibility I will. There's also a possibility we'll have a nice, big, beautiful agreement." Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian accused Washington on state TV of disrupting the talks but said the supreme leader had told officials to "go and finish" the deal.