Spy Chief Warns Iran's Plots to Kill Americans Abroad Are at 'Advanced Stages' as U.S. Thins Out Four More Embassies

America's top spy has put it in writing: Iran is trying to kill Americans overseas, and some of those plots are close to the finish line. Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton warned Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a one-page memo Friday that Iran has "substantially increased efforts to target U.S. personnel."

"The lethal plotting efforts by the Iranians against U.S. citizens have reached advanced stages in both the Middle East and certain other countries," Clayton wrote. Axios reporter Barak Ravid broke the story, and CBS News, AP, Fox News, the BBC and The Hill have since obtained or confirmed the memo. CIA Director John Ratcliffe was copied, CBS reported.

What the memo says

The memo is unclassified on purpose. Clayton told Rubio the intelligence on Iranian assassination plots has to reach more of the people it could save than are currently cleared to see it, so he offered to downgrade as much of it as possible for wider sharing at State, according to Axios. The underlying intelligence has already gone to senior State Department officials.

It doesn't name targets, countries outside the Middle East or the kind of attack being planned. Think of it as the fire marshal telling everyone in the building the alarm is real, while the details stay with the people who need to clear the exits.

Embassies are already emptying out

The warning arrived as the State Department pulled people out of harm's way. Earlier this week it ordered nonessential staff and all family members to leave the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh and the consulates in Jeddah and Dhahran, after Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen stepped up missile attacks on Saudi Arabia. We covered that order here.

On Friday it went further. Embassies in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Jordan and Lebanon were told to cut staff, Axios reported, citing a U.S. official: "We decided that due to the threat of Houthi attacks and Iranian terror plots we need to reduce our footprint and keep only essential staff." CNN first reported those four drawdowns. Those posts stay open under what State calls "restricted operations," and staffing in Kuwait and Bahrain is unchanged.

For many families it's a rerun. Plenty of those leaving had only just come back after being ordered out during the height of the war earlier this year. "There's a very Groundhog Day vibe," a source in Amman told CNN.

Trump: deal, or 'another little Epic Fury'

Hours before the memo surfaced, President Trump told a rally crowd in Fort Myers, Florida, that Tehran's window is closing. Operation Epic Fury is the U.S. military's name for the war it launched against Iran in late February.

"We may do another little Epic Fury, or they'll agree," Trump said. "If they're smart, they'll just say, 'Let's get down to business.' But I doubt they'll do that because perhaps they're not smart." Earlier Friday, U.S. envoy Tom Barrack said a strike on Iran could "absolutely" come as soon as this weekend, NTD reported.

Tehran answered with bluster. Iran's armed forces chief of staff, Ali Abdollahi, said Saturday that Iran would not let U.S. warships into the Persian Gulf "under any circumstances," according to the IRGC-linked Tasnim news agency, as relayed by Iran International. The facts on the water say otherwise: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said oil exports from the Gulf have already passed pre-war levels despite Iran's attempts to choke off shipping, Iran International reported. U.N. Ambassador Mike Waltz told the Financial Times the war could last another year but said he hopes the Iranians "come to the table" first, per CBS News.

Iran has done this before

Plots on American soil and against American officials aren't new for the regime. In November 2024, the Justice Department charged Farhad Shakeri, an asset of Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, in a murder-for-hire case. Shakeri told the FBI an IRGC official had tasked him with drawing up a plan to assassinate then-President-elect Trump within seven days.

That's the backdrop to Clayton's memo. A regime that tasked an operative to plan the killing of a president-elect isn't bluffing when it goes after diplomats, which is why State is thinning out embassies now rather than waiting for the first attack.

What happens next

Clayton's team is working to declassify more of the threat picture so it can reach diplomats in the field. Watch for more embassy moves, any word from the White House on a new strike, and whether Iran's Houthi proxies widen their attacks beyond Saudi Arabia, a fear U.S. officials voiced to Axios. Midterm voting ends Nov. 3.