Tens of thousands of protestors packed the streets outside the former U.S. Embassy in Tehran in the biggest anti-American rally in years, a show of support for hard-line opponents of President Hassan Rouhani’s historic outreach to Washington. (Nov. 4)
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President Barack Obama is receiving regular briefings on a terror threat that has closed U.S. diplomatic posts in the Middle East. NBC’s Kristen Welker reports.
By Henry Austin, NBC News contributor
About one-third the U.S. diplomatic posts that were temporarily shuttered due to a “serious threat” of al Qaeda attack reopened on Monday, hours after officials extended closures at 15 others through Saturday and shut four more.
Nine embassies and consulates opened their doors again, but a further 19 would be closed through Saturday “out of an abundance of caution,” the State Department said.
“This is not an indication of a new threat stream, merely an indication of our commitment to exercise caution and take appropriate steps to protect our employees including local employees and visitors to our facilities,” the State Department said in a statement late Sunday.
They added that many would have been shut for the celebration of Eid at the end of Ramadan.
“Out of an abundance of caution, we’ve decided to extend the closure of several embassies and consulates including a small number of additional posts,” the State Department added.
The countries with closure orders covered much of the Muslim and Arab world.
However, U.S. posts in Dhaka, Algiers, Nouakchott, Kabul, Herat, Mazar el Sharif, Baghdad, Basrah and Erbil reopened on Monday.
Missions in Abu Dhabi, Amman, Cairo, Riyadh, Dhahran, Jeddah, Doha, Dubai, Kuwait, Manama, Muscat, Sanaa, Tripoli, Antanarivo, Bujumbura, Djibouti, Khartoum, Kigali, and Port Louis will be closed until at least Saturday.
Officials told NBC News that the threat appears to be linked to Yemen, but the State Department has only confirmed that the warnings are generally tied to al Qaeda.
Yemen is home to perhaps the most dangerous terror network affiliate, known as al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP). The lethal wing is considered responsible for several terrorist strikes on the United States, including the foiled Christmas Day 2009 attempt to bomb an airplane over Detroit.
“The one thing we can talk about is the fact that there’s been an awful lot of chatter out there,” Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R.-Ga.), the ranking member of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” He added that the chatter is “very reminiscent of what we saw pre-9/11.”
“This is the most serious threat that I’ve seen in the last several years,” he added.
The Obama administration announced the weekend closures on Friday, and the State Department later released a global travel warning.
The alert called on American travelers to take additional precautions overseas, pointing to potential dangers involved with public transportation systems and other likely locations for tourists. It said that previous terrorist attacks have targeted subway and rail networks as well as airplanes and boats.
The alert is slated to expire Aug. 31.
The decision to close the U.S. diplomatic missions on Sunday — a work day in most of the region — came almost a year after an attack on a U.S. diplomatic post in Benghazi, Libya, that killed the ambassador and three other Americans.
NBC News’ Catherine Chomiak and the Associated Press contributed to this report.
This story was originally published on Mon Aug 5, 2013 5:59 AM EDT
Twenty-one US embassies and consulates, mostly in the Middle East, are closed for the day in response to fears of an unspecified attack by militants.
A state department global travel alert, issued on Friday, is also in force until the end of August.
The department said the potential for an al-Qaeda inspired attack was particularly strong in the Middle East and North Africa.
President Obama’s senior security team met late on Saturday to brief him.
National Security Adviser Susan Rice led the meeting, which included the secretaries of state for defence and homeland security and the heads of the FBI, CIA and National Security Agency, the White House said in a statement.
“The president has received frequent briefings over the last week on all aspects of the potential threat and our preparedness measures,” the statement said.
US missions across a swathe of the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Asia are closed for Sunday – a working day in the Muslim world.
Embassies affected include Amman, Cairo, Riyadh, Kabul and Dhaka.
Announcing the decision on Thursday, the state department said embassies could be closed on some other days too.
The embassy closures and US global travel alert came after the US reportedly intercepted al-Qaeda messages.
It has been suggested that they were between senior figures talking about a plot against an embassy.
Plot
Referring to the Middle East, the state department said: “Current information suggests that al-Qaeda and affiliated organisations continue to plan terrorist attacks both in the region and beyond, and that they may focus efforts to conduct attacks in the period between now and the end of August.”
The travel alert called for US citizens to be vigilant, warning of “the potential for terrorists to attack public transportation systems and other tourist infrastructure”.
An unnamed US official has said the threat could be related to the Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which ends this week.
Several European countries, including the UK, have temporarily shut missions in Yemen.
The UK Foreign Office said its embassy in Sanaa would remain closed until Tuesday.
On its website, the Foreign Office is advising against all travel to Yemen and is strongly urging British nationals to leave.
It says there is “a high threat from terrorism throughout Yemen” and “a very high threat of kidnap from armed tribes, criminals and terrorists”.
A Foreign Office spokesman would not say if the UK embassy closure was due to a specific threat, but a number of British embassies in the Middle East have been warned about increased risks.
“Our travel advice advises particular vigilance during Ramadan, when tensions could be heightened. We are particularly concerned about the security situation in the final days of Ramadan and into Eid.”
The US diplomatic missions closed on Sunday are in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates; Algiers, Algeria; Amman, Jordan; Baghdad, Iraq; Cairo, Egypt; Dhahran, Saudi Arabia; Djibouti, Djibouti; Dhaka, Bangladesh; Doha, Qatar; Dubai, United Arab Emirates; Irbil, Iraq; Jeddah, Saudi Arabia; Kabul, Afghanistan; Khartoum, Sudan; Kuwait City, Kuwait; Manama, Bahrain; Muscat, Oman; Nouakchott, Mauritania; Riyadh, Saudi Arabia; Sanaa, Yemen and Tripoli, Libya.
The US is closing embassies and consulates in Muslim and Middle Eastern countries on Sunday in response to an unspecified threat. State Department officials say they are closing the facilities out of an ‘abundance of caution.’ (Aug. 2)
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