US urges citizens to immediately leave over a dozen Middle East countries 

The US Department of State has urged all Americans to immediately depart more than a dozen countries in the Middle East, including Saudi Arabia and Qatar, amid escalating US-Israeli strikes against Iran.

The warning issued on Monday came after the State Department, in recent days, updated its travel advisories for several regional countries to recommend against travel.

The latest advisory applies to Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Israel, the occupied West Bank and Gaza, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

In a statement posted on X, Mora Namdar, the State Department’s assistant secretary for consular affairs, said US citizens should “DEPART NOW” from the countries listed using available commercial transportation “due to serious safety risks”.

The US Embassy in Amman, Jordan, announced earlier on Monday that its personnel had departed the diplomatic site “due to a threat”.

Al Jazeera’s Patty Culhane, reporting from Washington, DC, noted the unusual nature of the announcement on social media by a State Department official.

“The fact that the State Department is referring us to a tweet from an assistant secretary of state, and this isn’t necessarily official policy – but perhaps they are saying it is official policy – this is not at all how it is usually done,” Culhane said.

“This is really, truly bizarre. I can’t say that I have seen anything like this in my very long time covering Washington,” she said.

“This is not how this is done. The State Department has very complex processes to notify Americans in these places that they need to leave. That hasn’t happened. It’s not official government policy, at least it doesn’t appear to be yet, because this isn’t how they announce official government policy,” Culhane added.

“It’s not quite clear what this means, and exactly how Americans could leave the entire Middle East since commercial traffic has been interrupted so much because of all of the missiles,” she said.

“This is going to be a very big question, especially for all of the Americans in the Middle East”.

On Saturday, the US and Israel carried out a barrage of strikes on Iran, killing many top officials, including Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

Tehran retaliated with its own strikes across the region.

US President Donald Trump said on Monday that the conflict had been projected to last four to five weeks, but that it could go on for longer.