The U.S. State Department is restricting travel for government employees and their family members outside of major cities in Israel as concerns remain high Friday that Iran could attack at any moment in retaliation for an Israeli airstrike that destroyed the Iranian consulate in Syria.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem has posted a message on its website saying \u2018Out of an abundance of caution, U.S. government employees and their family members are restricted from personal travel outside the greater Tel Aviv (including Herzliya, Netanya, and Even Yehuda), Jerusalem, and Be\u2019er Sheva areas until further notice.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
It added that \u2018the security environment remains complex and can change quickly depending on the political situation and recent events.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Wednesday, Iran\u2019s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei promised to retaliate against Israel \u2014\u00a0saying \u2018it will be punished\u2019 \u2014\u00a0for an airstrike that demolished Iran\u2019s consulate in Syria earlier this month. Khamenei said the strike in Damascus, which left several Iranian generals dead, was \u2018wrongdoing\u2019 and akin to an attack on Iran itself.\u00a0<\/p>\n
State Department Spokesperson Matthew Miller, when asked about the new U.S. travel advisory Thursday,\u00a0said \u2018we have seen Iran making public threats against Israel in the past few days.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018Israel\u2019s in a very tough neighborhood and have been monitoring the security situation. You saw us slightly adjust our travel warnings at the beginning of this conflict. And we conduct ongoing assessments all the time about the situation on the ground,\u2019 he continued.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u2018I\u2019m not going to speak to the specific assessments that led to us to restrict our families, employees and family members\u2019 personal travel. But clearly, we are monitoring the threat environment in the Middle East and specifically in Israel,\u2019 he added. \u2018And that\u2019s what led us to give that warning our employees and their family members and to make it public so all U.S. citizens who either live in Israel or are traveling there are aware of it.\u2019\u00a0<\/p>\n
U.S. Central Command\u00a0Gen. Michael Kurilla also met with Israel Defense Forces Chief of the General Staff Lt. Gen Hezi Halevi in Israel on Thursday.<\/p>\n
Kurilla was scheduled to visit Israel, but he took the trip sooner than planned due to threats from Iran against Israel, Pentagon press secretary Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder confirmed during a press conference.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Fox News\u2019 Lawrence Richard, Peter Aitken and Yonat Friling contributed to this report.\u00a0<\/p>\n\n
The U.S. State Department is restricting travel for government employees and their family members outside of major cities in Israel as concerns remain high Friday that Iran could attack at any moment in retaliation for an Israeli airstrike that destroyed the Iranian consulate in Syria.\u00a0 The U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem has posted a message on <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":17874,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-17873","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-politics"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17873","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17873\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/17874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/shareperformanceinsight.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}