With the threat of a U.S. strike on Iran looming, the United States embassy in Jerusalem has told its workers that they may leave Israel and warned them that if they want to, it is vital that they do so immediately, according to an email from Ambassador Mike Huckabee sent to the U.S. mission Friday.

The move followed meetings and phone calls through the night, Mr. Huckabee told embassy workers in the email, and resulted from “an abundance of caution” and conversations with the State Department in which officials agreed that the safety of embassy staff was a priority.

Those wishing to leave “should do so TODAY,” Mr. Huckabee wrote in the email, sent at 10:24 a.m. local time. He urged them to find a flight out of Ben-Gurion Airport to any destination for which they could book passage.

The embassy’s move “will likely result in high demand for airline seats today,” he said in the email, a copy of which was reviewed by The New York Times. “Focus on getting a seat to anyplace from which you can then continue travel to DC, but the first priority will be getting expeditiously out of country.”

He added that while there might be more outbound flights in the coming days, there also might not be.

Already, KLM, the Dutch airline, has suspended service to Israel, citing “commercial and operational considerations.”

The email was verified by three people with knowledge of the matter.

Israel is a likely target for retaliation by Iran or its allies if it is attacked by the United States.

In the email, Mr. Huckabee told embassy employees that the mission had shifted to an “authorized departure” footing as of 10 a.m. Friday. That allows nonessential personnel and their dependents to evacuate at the government’s expense when “U.S. national interests or imminent threat to life requires it,” according to State Department regulations.

Mr. Huckabee told embassy workers that he would hold a town-hall meeting to provide additional information at 12:30 p.m.

“There is no need to panic,” Mr. Huckabee wrote, “but for those desiring to leave, it’s important to make plans to depart sooner rather than later.”

Iran and the United States concluded a six-hour round of talks in Geneva on Thursday with neither a diplomatic breakthrough nor an impasse on American demands that Tehran completely dismantle its nuclear program.

Iranian officials and Omani mediators said the two sides had agreed to continue talking next week in an effort to avert war. But it was notable that the two American negotiators, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, remained silent about the current status of negotiations, with the White House declining to comment.

American officials have said that among the options Mr. Trump is considering are initial targeted strikes on military and nuclear sites in Iran to force the government into giving more concessions for a deal and, if that failed, more widespread strikes, including creating conditions for regime change.

The State Department issued a travel advisory on Friday urging Americans to “reconsider travel” to both Israel and the West Bank, citing “terrorism and civil unrest.”

The State Department has taken precautions already elsewhere in the region. On Monday, the U.S. embassy in Lebanon ordered the departure of all non-emergency personnel and the family members of all government personnel.

Other countries are making similar moves. Australia said on Wednesday that the dependents of its diplomats in Israel and Lebanon should leave those countries, and has offered voluntary departures to the dependents of its staff in the United Arab Emirates, Qatar and Jordan.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/02/27/world/middleeast/us-embassy-jerusalem-authorized-departure.html

Euronews reported that **investigators are probing the disappearance of nearly 2,500 aircraft components for military planes worth about €17 million. The missing items include electronic modules and systems for Panavia Tornado fighter-bombers, AMX International attack aircraft and Lockheed C-130 Hercules transport planes. The Rome prosecutor’s office and the military prosecutor have placed about a dozen people under investigation on suspicion of embezzlement. They include senior Air Force logistics officials, generals and managers of an external company responsible for maintaining materials at the Brindisi warehouse. The parts are not routine spares but critical components required for the safe operation of military aircraft. Such components are typically tracked through military registries, inventory codes and NATO protocols. Investigators are examining how parts subject to strict accounting controls could have disappeared from official records before being physically removed from storage. A key focus of the probe is “decommissioning” certificates issued for some parts after they had already gone missing. If serviceable components were retroactively declared worn out, this could point to an organized effort to erase their traceability.

Search in Brazil

One unconfirmed line of inquiry suggests the parts may have been smuggled to South America, particularly Brazil, where some of the aircraft types remain in service. The AMX International AMX aircraft was developed through Italian-Brazilian cooperation and is operated by the Brazilian Air Force. Italy retired the type last year. Investigators are assessing whether certified components may have re-entered international supply channels, where original spare parts for aging aircraft are becoming scarcer as production has ceased. There are legal secondary markets for military aviation parts, including surplus sales and exchange mechanisms between allied countries. These markets are strictly regulated to prevent critical components from entering unauthorized parallel channels. The practice of cannibalizing aircraft to keep other platforms operational is also legal if carried out under established procedures. This requires proper documentation, technical oversight and clearly defined responsibility. Meanwhile, Italian judicial authorities have ordered a technical assessment to determine the actual condition of the missing parts and whether they were intended for disposal or remained fully serviceable. The Italian Air Force said it has set up an internal technical investigation commission. Authorities have not disclosed further details as the investigation continues.

The Army will soon have senior warrant officers bid against each other in an eBay-style auction for retention bonuses and six-year service commitments. Soldiers who agree to take a “minimum” bonus can cash in, while those who ask for larger ones will lose out, Army officials announced in a recent press release. Dubbed the “Warrant Officer Retention Bonus Auction,” the system will debut in March, an Army official said Friday. In the news release, Army officials said the new system represents a “shift from traditional, fixed‑rate bonuses to a more flexible, market-driven system and that the auction encourages warrant officers to bid their “true value.” Here’s how the Army says it will work:

Senior warrant officers hoping to receive a bonus for extending their active duty service commitment will submit confidential “bids,” which represent the minimum monthly paycheck bump each soldier “would be satisfied receiving” to sign a new six -year contract. Once all eligible warrant officers submit their bids, Army officials will determine both the amount of the bonus payment and who will receive it by calculating the auction’s “market-clearing” rate, a concept used widely in economics and finance. In that process, the “winning” bid is the bonus amount that would spread all of the program’s funding for the year among the most soldiers who agreed to accept a payment that size or smaller with their bids (all soldiers who win in the auction will receive the winning bonus, even if their bid was lower). Those who bid too high get nothing. “The goal is simple. Reward as many qualified Warrant Officers as possible with the most competitive bonus the budget allows,” Lt. Col. Tim Justicz, an Army economist who helped design the program, said in the release.

The auction is open to warrant officers in the CWO-3 and CWO-4 paygrades in “critical” military occupational specialties, or MOSs, according to the release. An Army official said the auction process would be for warrant officers in “technical” fields, a term the Army often uses for a variety of careers like cyber warfare, human intelligence collection, software operations and drones. The auction process will not apply to Army aviators. “Army leadership believes the system rewards transparency and encourages officers to carefully consider the compensation that would make them comfortable with continued service,” officials said in the release. The redesign of warrant officer bonuses comes as the Army is embarking on a slew of new human resources reforms. The Army also recently announced the Quality Tiered Incentive Program, which ties higher reenlistment bonuses to on-the-job performance, including “physical, technical, and tactical proficiency” in day-to-day tasks and fitness tests scores. An Army official said additional information on the auction process will be released soon.

Saudi Arabia’s bid to diversify its weapons partners is rankling the Trump administration, which sees deals with countries like Turkey potentially cutting into the US’s slice of the kingdom’s arms market, current and former US officials have told Middle East Eye. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman was feted at the White House in November when US President Donald Trump announced the kingdom would be buying advanced F-35 warplanes and rolled out a major strategic defence agreement. But more recently, US officials operating under Trump’s deal-making diplomacy agenda have sought clarity from Saudi Arabia about its arms deals talks with other regional countries. Following pushback from Washington, Saudi Arabia assured the US that it would not be purchasing Pakistan’s JF-17 fighter jet after reports emerged it could convert billions of dollars in loans to Islamabad for the warplane, the US official told MEE. But US officials have not received similar guarantees from Saudi Arabia about its potential participation in Turkey’s next-generation Kaan fighter programme.

“I don’t see where the Turkish fighter fits into the Saudis’ repertoire, which is extensive already. They have the best F-15s on the entire planet, better than the Americans. The Euro Typhoon is good, and they are about to get the F-35s,” Bilal Saab, a former senior defence official in the Trump administration, told MEE. A US official familiar with the matter said the Trump administration does not view the potential deal as replacing the F-35, but as Saudi Arabia leaving cash on the table for more purchases from the US. “The message to the Saudis has been, ‘What need do you feel is not being met by the US, that you need to go to Turkey for the Kaan?'” the official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told MEE. “This administration wants to be the sole provider, putting American exports first,” the source added.

Multipolar Middle East

Current and former Arab and US officials who spoke with MEE do not predict a major fallout, but the US’s pushback underscores how Trump’s diplomacy, based on zero-sum economics, is rubbing up against a more multipolar Middle East. “Saudi Arabia’s interest in the TAI (Turkish Aerospace Industries) Kaan is about having more choices, not replacing the United States, because this isn’t possible,” Hesham Alghannam, the director general of strategic studies and national security programmes at Naif Arab University in Riyadh, told MEE. “But if the US administration sees arms sales as a competition, it might view this move as a sign that Saudi Arabia is drifting away.” Cinzia Bianco, a Gulf expert at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told MEE, “There is room for misunderstanding.” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said during a visit to Saudi Arabia in February that a joint investment for Kaan “could be signed at any moment”. A model of the Kaan was displayed at the World Defence Show in Riyadh this month, emblazoned with a Saudi flag. Mehmet Demiroglu, TIA’s general manager, told Breaking Defense last week that a deal with Saudi Arabia could see between 20 and 50 warplanes made for the kingdom.

Defence experts say that Saudi Arabia could buy both the F-35 and the Kaan. Although the latter is billed as a Turkish warplane, it still requires an F110 engine made by General Electric. The sale has been under discussion for years, but has yet to move through Congress. There are tactical and broader strategic reasons why Saudi Arabia is toying with Turkey’s Kaan as it looks to close a deal with the Americans. Trump publicly promised Saudi Arabia it would be allowed to purchase warplanes as sophisticated as Israel’s F-35s. The F-35 can be ordered from Lockheed Martin like a car: “fully-loaded” or in a less advanced variety. Israel has long maintained an effective veto on the sale of advanced US weapons to Middle Eastern states to preserve its own “Qualitative Military Edge” against its neighbours. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said in November that US Secretary of State Marco Rubio promised that Saudi Arabia would receive inferior F-35s to Israel’s. “I don’t think that makes you too happy,” Trump told the Saudi crown prince at the White House, admitting Israel’s lobbying.

‘A diplomatic ploy’

The Trump administration is effectively caught between pro-Israeli lobbying and its desire to boost weapons exports to the Gulf. MEE revealed the Trump administration has been briefing lawmakers and their staff on how the sale of F-35s will impact QME, potentially reassessing the metrics. “I see this as a diplomatic ploy to try to get the right kind of specifications on the F-35,” Saab said. “The Saudis and other Gulf states use arms sales as a foreign policy tool, less so an attempt to build military capabilities.” “The incentive here is not military in nature for a better capability. For the Saudis, this is about ‘How do we get a better deal from the Americans?’” he added. “And quite frankly, it works.” Saudi Arabia has a track record of flirting with the US’s competitors to extract concessions. During the first Trump administration, the kingdom toyed with the Russian S-400 before acquiring the Thaad air defence system, provoking an angry response from the Trump administration at the time, the current and former US officials told MEE. But Turkey is offering the kingdom something of value that the US has yet to: co-production and tech transfers. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s Vision 2030 calls for 50 percent of the kingdom’s defence spending to be on locally produced items. “[To] be frank…the pace of US engagement on deep, structured co-production and transfer remains perceived as slower than Saudi aspirations, which will certainly prompt Riyadh to continue exploring partnerships that are often more flexible on local production and knowledge sharing,” Alghannam told MEE. “If Saudi Arabia feels pressured to choose one partner over others…that kind of pressure might push Riyadh to strengthen ties with alternative suppliers instead,” he added.

‘A big Israeli fuss’

Bargaining aside, Saudi Arabia’s talks with Turkey are also taking place amidst a rapidly changing geopolitical landscape, which Washington has at times been slow to notice. Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman jolted policy wonks when he lobbied Trump directly against the UAE in November for its role in Sudan’s civil war. MEE was the first to report the kingdom’s plans. Since then, Saudi Arabia has moved to evict the UAE from Yemen. It is backing the Sudanese army, alongside Egypt and Turkey, to defeat the UAE’s allies, the Rapid Support Forces paramilitary group. As Saudi Arabia cooperates with Pakistan, Turkey, Qatar, and Egypt, the bonds between the UAE and Israel are becoming starker. Saudi Arabia could be using its wealth to shore up this new bloc through arms purchases. But Bianco, at the European Council on Foreign Relations, told MEE Riyadh is wary that the “promises” Trump made on the F-35 will not materialise, and are susceptible to Israel’s allies in Washington. Trump himself has not waded into the Gulf rift, but US Senator Lindsey Graham, a key ally of the president, lambasted the Saudi crown prince at the Munich Security Conference on Friday. “The Saudi F-35 deal is now divorced from normalisation with Israel. Does it end up like the Emirati F-35’s that never materialised because of other conditions? In the UAE’s case, it was China; in the Saudi case, Israel. What if the Israelis make a really big fuss about this?” Bianco said. “The Saudis will take the F-35 even if they receive a lesser version than Israel. They won’t be happy about it, but they will take it,” she added.