Intelligence memo warns Iran’s plots to kill US officials have reached advanced stages

A US intelligence memo says Iran has moved into the advanced stages of plots to assassinate American officials across the Middle East and beyond, as embassy staff drawdowns and oil markets react to the mounting threat.

Director of National Intelligence Jay Clayton sent the warning to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who also serves as national security adviser, according to reporting that three US officials confirmed. The memo states that lethal Iranian plotting against US citizens has advanced in the Middle East and in certain other countries, and it frames that intelligence as reason to keep thinning personnel at American embassies.

Daily Mail reporting described the document emerging shortly after the State Department announced staff reductions at US embassies in Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Those posts were placed under restricted operations. They will stay open, and staff in those four countries were not ordered out. A separate Wednesday order told nonessential US personnel and their families to leave Saudi Arabia.

The State Department pointed to rising threats from Yemen’s Iranian-backed Houthi rebels and did not publicly cite direct Iranian threats to US personnel. Three officials tied the staffing changes to threats from both Iran and the Houthis. US officials also denied that the drawdowns were linked to any potential new US and Israeli strikes on Iran.

Clayton’s memo lands as regional pressure builds

Clayton’s memo put the threat in plain language. Teams “have received intelligence that Iran has substantially increased efforts to target US personnel.”

It went further:

"The lethal plotting efforts by the Iranians against US citizens have reached advanced stages in both the Middle East and certain other countries."

That assessment arrives against a longer Iranian campaign of targeting American leaders. The New York Post detailed how the regime assembled kill teams and issued fatwas aimed at Donald Trump over years, including 2024 plots in which IRGC-linked operatives recruited hitmen and treated money as no obstacle.

Counterterrorism analyst Yigal Carmon described the pattern without soft edges.

"They are absolutely killers, like the mafia. They have a list of the people they want dead and they have dispatched many of their spies to arrange to kill them."

Those earlier schemes help explain why a fresh memo about advanced-stage plotting against US officials carries weight for Americans serving overseas and for security details at home. Threat traffic of this kind has already forced hard looks at protection for the president’s family, including Secret Service reviews after Iranian state media targeting.

Embassy cuts, oil spike, and Houthi pressure

The staffing moves unfolded on a tight clock. Nonessential personnel left Saudi Arabia on Wednesday. Oil prices jumped Thursday, with Brent crude up 2.68 percent to $111.74 a barrel. Iran has choked the Strait of Hormuz, a waterway that carries a fifth of the world’s oil, with speedboats, mines, and explosive drones, fueling severe global shortages across nearly eight months of war.

Iranian state television said the Revolutionary Guard navy again threatened to strike US military bases if America keeps guiding commercial ships through the strait. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi used an opinion column in the Financial Times this week to warn against further escalation.

"Any further escalation around the Strait of Hormuz or elsewhere in the region will put civilian lives and the well-being of all regional states and the global economy at great risk."

Houthi fighting with the Saudi-led coalition has surged again, with missile and drone strikes into Saudi Arabia. The State Department leaned on that Houthi threat when it explained the embassy posture. The Clayton memo, by contrast, put Iranian lethal plotting against Americans at the center of the personnel discussion.

Markets and diplomats are reading the same map. When a regime already willing to mine a critical oil lane also advances assassination plots, embassy drawdowns are not abstract. They are the practical answer to a government that treats American lives as bargaining chips.

Strike planning and Trump’s election clock

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth flew to Israel this week to work through new strike options with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. The New York Times, as cited in the primary reporting, said US and Israeli commanders had mapped a “short but intensive” operation against Iran’s nuclear sites, energy infrastructure, and missile and drone arsenal. Some US planners believe a brief campaign could batter Iran’s economy and force a climbdown on its nuclear program.

President Trump has repeatedly pulled the plug on fresh combat at the last minute, including earlier this month, and vowed not to strike before the midterm vote. He is 12 days from those elections. A full US armada, including three aircraft carriers and thousands of Marines, is not expected in place until early November. Trump has floated the idea of using a 22,000-pound GBU-43/B “Mother of All Bombs” on the Pickaxe Mountain nuclear site buried deep in granite.

At a Friday rally in Florida he kept the option open while tying it to Iranian choices.

"we may do another little Epic Fury, or they'll agree."

That mix of military preparation and political timing matches earlier comments in which Trump said election factors shaped limits on full military action against Iran. The administration has also pushed back hard on Tehran’s broader demands, including when Trump answered Iran’s reparations talk by stressing decades of Iranian attacks on Americans.

Iran’s record against Trump himself

The memo’s focus is American officials and citizens. Iran’s record against Trump personally shows the same method: recruit, pay, and try again. Just the News reported that IRGC special operations leader Rahman Mokadam, tied to 2024 assassination plots against Trump, was killed in US-Israeli strikes, with Trump informed by Israel. Pakistani national Asif Merchant faces trial in Brooklyn over an alleged Iranian-backed murder-for-hire scheme; Afghan national Farhad Shakeri remains at large.

Hegseth put the outcome in direct terms.

"The leader of the unit who attempted to assassinate President Trump has been hunted down and killed. Iran tried to kill President Trump, and President Trump got the last laugh."

The Washington Examiner reported that Israel shared fresh intelligence on a new Iranian plan to kill Trump, prompting extra Secret Service steps such as aircraft switches for better defenses. Trump has said openly that he sits atop Iran’s target list.

"I’m their number one target. It’s out all over the place. I’m their No. 1, because they’re scum."

High-level coordination on the Iran file has stayed active inside the administration, including when Vance confirmed he called military commanders to assess the Iran conflict. That is the sober work of governing while a hostile regime keeps assassination on the table.

What the drawdowns do, and do not, settle

US officials insist the embassy reductions are about protecting people now, not green-lighting a new war calendar. Embassies in Jordan, Lebanon, Qatar, and the UAE remain open under restricted operations. Saudi Arabia saw the harder order for nonessential staff and families. The Clayton memo told Rubio the intelligence should support a continued drawdown effort. That is accountability to the people who staff those posts, not a press-release exercise.

Iran’s answer has been the familiar mix of threats at sea, Houthi proxies, and deniable plotting. An oil tanker was hit in a ship-to-ship transfer zone near Basra, Iraq. The Guard navy keeps warning about US bases. The foreign minister lectures the world about escalation while the intelligence community tells America’s top diplomat that lethal plots have already reached advanced stages.

Taxpayers fund embassies so diplomacy can function. They do not fund them so Iranian hit planners can treat American diplomats as soft targets. When the Director of National Intelligence puts “advanced stages” in writing, the responsible move is to shrink the target list and keep the pressure on the regime that created the danger.

Regimes that recruit kill teams and mine oil lanes do not deserve the benefit of the doubt, they deserve clear eyes, tighter security, and consequences that match the threat.