The US government has urged Americans across the Middle East to be alert and ready to leave “should there be escalation” in the region.<\/p>\n
It comes amid US media reports that President Donald Trump may be planning new, intense strikes on Iran over the weekend.<\/p>\n
In its alert, the State Department said: “US diplomatic facilities, including outside the Middle East, have been targeted.<\/p>\n
“Iran and groups supportive of Iran may target other US interests overseas or at locations associated with the United States and Americans throughout the world.”<\/p>\n
Tehran earlier accused the US of escalating tensions, saying any regional state co-operating with Washington would be “engulfed by the flames of war”.<\/p>\n
“Americans currently in the Middle East should exercise caution and heightened vigilance and should be prepared for flight cancellations, periodic airspace closures, and potential travel disruptions,” the security alert said on Saturday.<\/p>\n
“Americans in the region should consider departing, or be prepared to depart should there be escalation. Americans outside the Middle East should seriously reconsider travel to and through the region.”<\/p>\n
US embassies across the Middle East – including in Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates – reposted the security alert for American nationals, warning of “unexpected escalation”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The US government has urged Americans across the Middle East to be alert and ready to leave “should…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":723500,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-723499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=723499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/723499\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/723500"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=723499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=723499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=723499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}