At 10:24 this morning, Friday February 27, the United States Ambassador to Israel emailed his own staff and told them to leave the country today.
Not next week. Not when convenient. Today.
Mike Huckabee, the man Donald Trump personally appointed to represent America in Israel, sent an email to every embassy employee in Jerusalem telling them that anyone wishing to depart should book “any available flight” and leave Israeli soil before the day ends. The embassy has shifted to “authorized departure” status, meaning the US government will pay for nonessential personnel and their families to evacuate. The New York Times obtained the email. The timestamp is 10:24 AM local time. The language says “no need to panic.” The action says panic.
When an ambassador tells his own people to leave the country he is assigned to, he is not managing risk. He is clearing the blast radius.
Authorized departure is the second-to-last step on the State Department’s crisis escalation ladder. The only step above it is ordered departure, which is mandatory evacuation. The United States has not reached ordered departure. But at 10:24 this morning it reached the step directly below it, and the ambassador personally urged speed.
Now hold this against what happened in the last 72 hours.
Wednesday, Geneva. Six and a half hours of talks. Araghchi called it the most serious session yet. The Wall Street Journal reported the US and Iran remain far apart on every core issue. Iran refused permanent zero enrichment. America refused anything less.
Thursday, 37 advanced combat aircraft landed at RAF Lakenheath in a single day. 12 F-35As. 14 F-15E Strike Eagles. Additional F-22s. The staging base that funneled the first wave of Raptors to Israel is now reloading with strike aircraft carrying 23,000 pounds of ordnance each.
Friday morning, the ambassador tells his people to leave.
Wednesday you negotiate. Thursday you reload. Friday you evacuate your own embassy.
That is not a sequence of unrelated events. That is a countdown visible to anyone reading the timestamps.
Huckabee’s email went out five hours ago. Tomorrow, Saturday February 28, Oman’s Foreign Minister meets Vice President Vance in Washington carrying Tehran’s response to Geneva. Technical talks are nominally scheduled for Vienna next week. But you do not tell your embassy staff to leave today if you believe next week’s talks will happen in a world that looks like this one.
The email says “make plans sooner rather than later.” Ambassadors are trained to communicate in precise diplomatic language where every word is calibrated. “Sooner rather than later” from a political appointee who does not speak in euphemism means the window for safe commercial departure is closing and he knows approximately when it closes.
India told its citizens to leave Iran. Germany told citizens in Israel to prepare for airspace closures. Beirut’s US embassy began evacuating. And now America’s own ambassador in Jerusalem is telling his own staff to get out of the country he represents.
Everyone with classified briefing access is moving in the same direction. Toward the exit.
Today. Not Monday. Not after Vienna. Today, Friday February 27.
The people who know what is coming are not waiting to find out. They are already on planes.
The only people still debating whether this is real are the ones without the clearance to read what Huckabee read before he typed that email at 10:24 am this morning.
https://open.substack.com/pub/shanakaans 
