US Diplomats in Limbo Amid Escalating Iran Tensions and State Department Staffing Issues

As the U.S. war against Iran ramps up again, hundreds of U.S. diplomats remain in limbo. The State Department brought them home for security reasons as U.S. facilities across the Middle East were facing Iranian attacks, and all this came as the Trump administration was already shrinking the entire diplomatic core, as NPR's Michele Kelemen reports.

Senator Andy Kim once worked at the State Department and says, taking the oath of office there was one of his proudest moments. A nonpartisan career officer that was focused on what is best for our country. He was out in the blazing heat on Capitol Hill last week addressing former career professionals who were fired by the Trump administration. Asked what he's hearing from people still inside the State Department about the war with Iran, the New Jersey Democrat told NPR that diplomats don't really know when or if they can get back to their jobs in the region.

I have been hearing a lot of concerns, especially because we have no idea what President Trump is going to do next. I mean, this war has been utterly rudderless. It has been reckless, and we see it now as we're going back into, you know, combat hostilities. So yes, you know, a lot of the officers - State Department officers, other civilians, including our military, as well - I keep hearing from them and their families, just what is happening?

When the war broke out, the State Department scrambled to help Americans leave Gulf countries that were coming under fire from Iran, and U.S. diplomats were evacuated at the same time from Bahrain, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, leaving only enough staff to deal with emergencies. A foreign service officer who lost her job in last year's reorganization, Maryum Saifee, says she tried to pitch in while she was still on administrative leave.

When the Iran war initially broke out, there were task forces that were set up. They were understaffed. So we said, well, we're already here. We're getting paid, we speak Arabic. We speak Farsi. I've been evacuated twice from the Middle East, so I know what it's like to evacuate. So I volunteered, and the State Department said, no. We're not interested.

Saifee calls this a waste, since U.S. taxpayers paid for her language training, and it took nearly a year for the State Department to finalize layoffs of foreign service officers like Saifee. She remains in touch with current employees who she says are in the dark about when they might return to posts in the Middle East.

Colleagues on the inside aren't even sure when they're going back, and they're given very little notice, and they just have to live, actually, the way we were living - in limbo - when we were fired and unfired four times over the course of 10 months.

The State Department says it has the personnel it needs, and U.S. embassies remain operational. A statement to NPR says that the objective is to return personnel and their families as soon as conditions permit, but the security environment remains, quote, "dynamic," so officials can't offer any timeline. The U.S. government pays a per diem and supplements temporary housing for employees who had to evacuate - that runs out in August. Most of the embassies in the region also don't have an ambassador, much to the chagrin of Senator Chris Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland who grew up in a foreign service family.

We need those people on the ground every day, listening to foreign countries, advising, you know, the administration on what course of action to take. Right now, this administration is AWOL in many countries around the world.

He says it's particularly noticeable in the Persian Gulf.

And right now in the Gulf, what we're seeing is our country's hurting. Countries in the region are hurting.

At a recent town hall, diplomats were left with many unanswered questions about when or whether embassies in the Middle East will return to normal staffing and whether they'll be able to bring families back and get children enrolled in schools. In the meantime, they're working remotely in Northern Virginia. The State Department says their safety remains its highest priority.