The United States is drawing down the presence of staffers who are not deemed essential to operations in the Middle East and their loved ones due to the potential for regional unrest.

Iran has told the United States and UK that it could retaliate if the countries aid Israel in attacks amid fears the Middle East will descend into war.

As of mid-2025, there are about 40,000 to 50,000 US troops in the Middle East, comprising personnel stationed in both large, permanent bases and smaller forward sites across the region.

Leaders of some of the world’s biggest economic powers will arrive in the Canadian Rockies on Sunday for a Group of Seven summit shadowed by a widening war in the Middle East, and U.S. President Donald Trump’s unresolved trade war with allies and

Shapiro served as Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for the Middle East until January—charged with, among other things, considering scenarios in which tensions between Israel and Iran escalated into all-out war and preparing U.

The United States has pulled some diplomatic staff and military families out of the Middle East, citing unspecified regional security risks.

Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz claims China could hold the 'moral authority' to negotiate Middle East peace after Israel's strikes on Iran.

Rising tensions with Iran and fears of an Israeli strike prompted the U.S. to move some of its nonmilitary personnel out of the region.

Hezbollah, which went on to fight repeated wars with the main U.S. regional ally Israel, has said other groups were responsible. Iran had complaints too. Iraq invaded Iran in 1980 and started using chemical weapons against Iranian soldiers and border villages from 1982 but Washington lent diplomatic backing in the war to Baghdad.

President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has reported that the United States has redirected 20,000 missiles, originally intended for Ukraine to combat Russian Shahed drones, to the Middle East. Source: Zelenskyy in an interview with ABC News;