Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton put a warning in writing on Friday about plots against Americans overseas. He wanted as many Americans as possible to see it.
"Through various channels, we have received intelligence that Iran has substantially increased efforts to target U.S. personnel," Clayton wrote in an unclassified memo to Secretary of State and National Security Adviser Marco Rubio. "The lethal plotting efforts by the Iranians against U.S. citizens have reached advanced stages in both the Middle East and certain other countries."
CIA Director John Ratcliffe was copied.
Clayton said the danger was "relevant to more individuals than are currently cleared to receive this information." So he had the intelligence community downgrade the sensitive material so it could reach the State Department employees whose names might be on Tehran's list.
The administration had already moved. Earlier in the week, the State Department ordered nonessential staff and their families out of Saudi Arabia, leaving the embassy to emergency personnel. It also ordered more staff cuts at the posts in Lebanon, the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Jordan. Those posts have been on restricted operations since the war began.
Saudi Arabia has become a shooting gallery. Iran's Houthi proxies in Yemen have been hitting the kingdom's oil facilities and airports with drones and missiles. Earlier this month, a strike on King Khalid International Airport in Riyadh killed at least a dozen people, including an American.
President Trump isn't waiting to find out what Iran tries next. "We may do another little Epic Fury," he told a rally crowd in Florida on Friday. That's the name of the U.S. campaign that hit Iran in February. "Or they'll agree. If they're smart, they'll just say, let's get down to business."
He also turned down Iran's latest offer to reopen the Strait of Hormuz, saying Tehran wants a deal "because they're losing so badly." He accused the regime of trying to drive up gas prices before the midterms.
Pentagon planners have already put options in front of him. They include strikes on the tunnels and entrances of Iran's nuclear facility at Pickaxe Mountain, and on Kharg Island, which handles most of Iran's oil exports.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi's reply was, "We don't care about U.S. midterm elections."
The regime has been hunting Americans for years. In 2022, the Justice Department charged a member of Iran's Revolutionary Guard with offering $300,000 to have John Bolton, Trump's former national security adviser, killed. Officials said Mike Pompeo was on the list, too. In 2024, prosecutors charged an Iranian operative in a Revolutionary Guard plot to assassinate Trump himself.
The Biden administration knew all of that. In 2023, it still approved the release of $6 billion in frozen Iranian money as part of a prisoner swap.
The Trump administration is handling it differently. Clayton's memo names no targets and no countries, and it doesn't say whether an attack is imminent. Still, the State Department pulled Americans out of harm's way before the warning ever reached the press, and the president has the strike options in hand.
The memo is dated October 23. The midterms are November 3, and the administration has said it will hit Iran again after them if Tehran doesn't make a deal.
