The State Department's spokesman announced the order on X on Wednesday afternoon — and used the same post to shoot down the early reports that the pullout covered embassies across the Gulf.
The US State Department on Wednesday issued an ordered departure for non-emergency US government employees and their family members in Saudi Arabia, ordering them out of the kingdom as Iranian-supported Houthi attacks on Saudi airports and infrastructure intensify. State Department spokesman Tommy Pigott confirmed the order in a post on X on Wednesday afternoon, and the US Embassy in Riyadh issued a security alert the same day warning of possible further Houthi attacks on the country.
Pigott set out the administration's reasoning in full. "Iranian-supported Houthis have increasingly engaged in hostilities against Saudi Arabia, including attacks on civilian airports and other critical infrastructure resulting in civilian casualties and severe travel disruptions," he wrote, adding in the department's fuller statement that "the hostilities have the potential to escalate rapidly, including beyond that immediate area." The department said it will continue to support the departing employees and their families on their way back to the United States.
The order arrived wrapped in a public correction, because the first reports of it were wrong. AFP, citing a diplomatic source, reported that all American staff and their families had been ordered out of the Saudi embassy and that families of embassy staff in the United Arab Emirates, Jordan, Qatar and Bahrain had also been ordered to leave. Pigott's post opened with two words aimed straight at that report: "This is inaccurate." The ordered departure, he said, covers "non-emergency US government employees and their family members in Saudi Arabia only." US officials told Reuters the department also plans to withdraw family members from a number of other missions in the region, and that other Gulf missions would be ordering family members to leave — but no ordered departure for any other country has been publicly confirmed, and Pigott did not address changes to other missions. The order itself, as issued, is Saudi Arabia only.
"The safety and security of Department personnel and their families remain our highest priority, and we will continue to take all necessary steps to protect and support them."
The threat behind the order has been building all month. Saudi Arabia has come under near-daily Houthi missile and drone attacks in October, including a strike on Riyadh's King Khalid International Airport on October 10 that killed at least 12 people and injured more than 300, according to Saudi authorities — the kingdom's deadliest strike in years. The airport shut for a prolonged period and resumed only limited Saudi airline service on Wednesday, with major international carriers including Lufthansa and Air France still suspended. On Wednesday itself, the Saudi-led coalition reported intercepting drones over Medina and the Eastern Region, and debris from an intercepted drone targeting the Shaybah oilfield killed two foreign workers, Saudi Arabia's Energy Ministry said. The Riyadh embassy itself is no stranger to the threat: the embassy and a CIA station hosted there came under drone attack in early March, and Washington had only in recent months begun returning personnel who were pulled out in February, when Tehran launched attacks on US facilities after the US-Israeli war on Iran began.
An ordered departure is one of the strongest tools the State Department has. It is mandatory, not voluntary: the employees and family members it covers must leave, while essential staff stay and the embassy remains open — it is not an evacuation of American citizens generally, and it does not close the mission. The department's standing travel advisory for Saudi Arabia already tells Americans to reconsider travel, at Level 3, because of armed conflict, terrorism and the threat of missile and drone attacks, with the areas bordering Yemen at Level 4, do not travel. US government employees in the kingdom now need special authorization to use any Saudi airport at all.
Saudi Arabia's own forces have been intercepting the incoming fire day after day, and the kingdom's position is that it is defending its airports, energy sites and cities against a campaign directed from Yemen with Iranian support. The Houthis, for their part, denied on Wednesday that they had launched drones toward Medina or carried out operations against Saudi Arabia that day, according to Reuters — though the group had claimed an attack on Saudi Aramco's headquarters in Dhahran on the night of October 13 and had pledged further strikes on Saudi airports and oil sites. What happens next turns on whether the attacks keep coming, and Pigott's statement left the door open to whatever Washington judges necessary: the hostilities, the department warned, have the potential to escalate rapidly.