State Department security officials weren’t notified of ‘imminent’ threats to US embassies

But State Department officials remain in the dark about the specific nature of that threat, the sources said. These officials also say the State Department did not produce the analysis that US embassies in the Middle East faced an imminent threat, the legally required threshold to justify Soleimani’s killing.

While security at US embassies in the region was increased in recent months, those steps weren’t taken immediately ahead of the Soleimani strike and weren’t the additional measures that are usually taken in an “imminent threat” situation, former State Department officials said. Those officials said State would usually issue an explicit warning to diplomats overseas, take follow-up steps to limit their movements or actively consider staff evacuations.

The agency also failed to take steps that would be typical in a situation like this, former State Department officials said, failing to issue an explicit warning to diplomats overseas or take follow-up steps to limit diplomats’ movements or actively consider staff evacuations.

Confusing explanations

Since the strike, Trump administration officials have issued confusing explanations, contradicting each other about how imminent a threat the Iranian general posed, whether they had specific intelligence on the threat and even what that threat was, with Trump saying one thing, then another, while officials offered varying explanations.

On Monday, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said Soleimani’s killing was part of a larger strategy of deterrence, a shift from his pervious rationale that the strike was to prevent an “imminent” attack.

“Judging from the type and intensity of the strike, the regime certainly must now understand what we will do if they ever again pose risk to American lives,” Pompeo said during a speech at Stanford’s Hoover Institution. “If Iran escalates, we will end it on our terms.”

Responding to a question later about why Americans should trust the intelligence about the reported “imminent” threat, Pompeo said, “There was in fact a set of imminent attacks that were being plotted by Qassim Soleimani.”

“It was unmistakable,” he said. Pompeo said the intelligence community’s view was “that the risks were real and growing and that the actions that we took that day reduced that risk. It never eliminates it. But it reduced that risk.”

However, Pompeo, a former CIA director, told the audience that “the intelligence community makes mistakes, all the time.”

CNN reached out to eight embassies in the region, including Baghdad, to see if they received specific threat warnings about any plot to blow up their posts. Only two replied, stating they got the worldwide security warning that was sent to all the US embassies about a “potential escalation threat” following the death of a US contractor in a rocket attack in Iraq by Iranian proxies.

‘I’m not going to discuss intelligence’

On Sunday, Secretary of Defense Mark Esper said on CNN there was a threat against the US embassy in Baghdad, but would not go further.

“I’m not going to discuss intelligence,” Esper told CNN’s Jake Tapper on State of the Union, and reiterated that Trump had not referenced specific intelligence when he told Fox it was “his belief” that four embassies had been targeted.

Yet Esper also explicitly said on CBS that he had not seen any intelligence to back up Trump’s claim about the four diplomatic outposts.

“I didn’t see one with regard to four embassies,” Esper said when asked if there was a specific piece of evidence.

Trump’s National Security Advisor Robert O’Brien said “very reasonable security precautions” were taken, but suggested no specific warning was given to the embassy in Baghdad.

“We’re not going to cut and run every time somebody threatens us,” O’Brien said on Sunday when ABC asked why the Baghdad embassy was not evacuated. He emphasized military reinforcements which were moved to the region. “We are not going to have another Benghazi,” he said, referring to a 2012 attack in Libya that left four Americans dead, including the US ambassador.

Pompeo has not said there were any threats to specific US embassies, describing the threat posed by Soleimani as one that “included attacks on US embassies.”

A State Department spokesperson said that every US embassy worldwide was warned of potential escalation with Iran, but this person would not say if that security warning went out before or after the Soleimani strike, saying that the dates of classified cables aren’t disclosed.

The spokesperson also wouldn’t say if specific US embassies in the Middle East were warned they could face bombings.

“The Department of State sent a worldwide security warning to every embassy alerting them of potential escalation with Iran and their proxies,” a State Department spokesperson told CNN. “We followed up by calling every RSO [regional security officer] in the GCC [Gulf Cooperation Council] and Levant to make sure they understood the gravity of the situation.”

The spokesperson said the department also asked the regional security officers if they needed additional diplomatic security assets, agents, or resources.

One source familiar with the warning said it had gone out before Soleimani’s killing. US missile strikes against facilities in Iraq and Syria tied to an Iranian-backed militia on December 29, four days before the Soleimani strike, led officials to expect some form of retaliation from Iran’s proxies.

The source said the State Department was working around the clock with embassies worldwide, even calling them, to be sure that they heeded the warnings. But this source said State was not aware that four specific US embassies faced a particular threat.

The fact that the State Department alert went out to “every embassy” and Trump administration officials continue to avoid referencing specific warnings to specific diplomatic outposts contributes to the mounting skepticism about Trump’s assertion that Soleimani posed an imminent threat to four US embassies.

Traditionally when threat information against a US diplomatic post is received, the pertinent bureaus at State — in conjunction with other relevant agencies — evaluate its credibility and decide how to proceed.

“If it’s credible, specific, cannot be thwarted and poses a threat to our people, an Emergency Action Committee is formed at post, coordinating their deliberations with main State and Diplomatic Security, specifically,” explained John Kirby, a CNN contributor and former spokesperson for the State Department and the Pentagon.

It would be extremely rare — and likely only in a case where the threat is hours or minutes away — that a threat against a US embassy picked up by another US agency would not be shared with State Department officials who oversee security.

Esper said on CNN that the US embassy in Iraq did know of a threat, separate from that of the militia the US struck on December 29th and protestors who stormed the embassy January 1. Yet in describing that threat he spoke only in broad terms of “threat streams” the embassy was tracking.

In addition to the classified security warning that went to US embassies before the Soleimani attack, another security alert was sent to US embassies the day after the strike citing “heightened tension in the Middle East that may result in security risks to U.S. citizens abroad.”

Embassies were encouraged to put out public messaging to warn of the potential for mounting violence in the Middle East. Three days later, on Monday, January 6th, that security alert became mandatory worldwide.