The U.S.’ moves to evacuate some State Department personnel and military families from the Middle East are seen by experts as a potential sign of a U.S. or Israeli strike against Iran’s nuclear program — or, at least, a signal to Iran that the U.S. is prepared for such action, ahead of a planned round of nuclear talks with Tehran. 

The moves come as President Donald Trump’s self-imposed deadline for the talks is approaching this week, and Trump has expressed public frustration with the lack of progress being made. There have been conflicting reports about whether the talks expected this weekend are still slated to occur.

The State Department is drawing down personnel in Iraq, the department said, and the Pentagon is allowing for voluntary departures of military families from locations in the Middle East. The United Kingdom, separately, issued a maritime trade warning about a potential “escalation of military activity” in the Middle East.

Dana Stroul, the research director at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and former deputy assistant secretary of defense for the Middle East, noted that the Trump administration had conducted mandatory drawdowns of State Department personnel in Iraq at the end of the first Trump administration. The Pentagon evacuations, she noted, are thus far optional.

“This was part of the Iran policy approach [during Trump’s first administration] to increase pressure on the Iraqi government to get attack[s] against U.S. forces to stop,” Stroul told Jewish Insider. “So some of the people making these decisions inside the Trump administration have prior experience with reducing our presence in the region as part of a pressure play against Iran.”

But, she added, a “reduction in military families in the Gulf is the first step military planners would want to take if they were trying to reduce risk to U.S. personnel before large-scale, significant military operations.”

“If you’re trying to minimize risk before significant military operations, this is what you do. But right now they’re voluntary, not ordered,” Stroul continued.

Stroul argued that, in combination with the recent call between Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Trump’s public comments that he’s been frustrated by Iran’s posture in negotiations, “Tehran should take notice.”

Daniel Shapiro, Stroul’s successor in the deputy assistant secretary role, said that the administration “is clearly into some major preparations for possible military action vs Iran (by US and/or Israel).”

“A useful signal ahead of round 6 of nuke talks,” Shapiro continued. “Need to be prepared to back it up.”

Jason Brodsky, the policy director for United Against Nuclear Iran, framed the move as a likely sign of action, noting that congressional testimony by Gen. Erik Kurilla, who leads U.S. Central Command, set for Thursday morning, had been postponed.

“Something is cooking,” Brodsky said.

John Hannah, a senior fellow at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America and former national security advisor to Vice President Dick Cheney, told JI he believes that the moves are primarily an “unambiguous signal to the Iranians in advance of the next round of talks that U.S. patience is not unlimited and that time may be running out for them.”

He said the steps will take time to carry out but “they all have the indicia of the classic playbook that the United States would start rolling out in advance of anticipated hostilities. And of course it’s all being undertaken without much stealth and secrecy, but rather in a manner that ensures the Iranians and the rest of the world will know about it.”

He added that it “doesn’t necessarily have to be just one or the other,” and the moves should leave Iran guessing.

“The fact that the immediate purpose of these moves might primarily be a signaling mechanism to influence Iran’s posture in the negotiations doesn’t ipso facto mean it’s all just a bluff — although, if we’re honest, bluffing and then retreating is clearly often an integral part of President Trump’s negotiating MO and the ‘art of the deal,’” Hannah said. “That said, it could also be a deadly serious first step to put Iran on notice that it’s got one last chance to take the deal on offer or face the wrath of a U.S. military strike.” 

“Trump is perfectly capable of going either way and the Iranians shouldn’t sleep too comfortably trying to figure out which one of those possibilities  they’re facing,” he continued. “If they guess wrong, the outcome for them is potentially catastrophic.”

Mark Dubowitz, the CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, framed the moves more as a negotiating tactic.

“Ahead of round 6, the U.S. is signaling: failure at the table means real consequences,” Dubowitz said on X. “Starting to move non-essential personnel and families —reversible but not trivial. Message to Khamenei: you can end this peacefully, or face serious preparedness if you don’t.”

Kurilla said in response to a question from lawmakers on Tuesday about retaliation from a potential Israeli strike on Iran that the U.S. is continually assessing threats to military personnel in the Middle East and taking steps to address potential vulnerabilities.

The IDF found and returned the bodies of U.S.-Israeli citizens Judith Weinstein-Haggai and Gad Haggai, who were killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office announced on Thursday.

The Haggais were murdered in Kibbutz Nir Oz during Hamas’ onslaught targeting Gaza border communities. Their bodies were held by Hamas, the PMO said.

The couple was on a morning walk when they were shot by terrorists on motorcycles. Weinstein-Haggai called emergency medical services, but the ambulance that was traveling to help them was hit by a rocket, according to her daughter. 

Gad was 72 and Judith, a New York native who also held Canadian citizenship, was 70; they are survived by four children and seven grandchildren.

The Weinstein-Haggai family released a statement via the Hostage and Missing Families Forum, saying that their return “is painful and heartbreaking, yet it also brings healing to our uncertainty. Their return reminds us all that it is the state’s duty to bring everyone home, so that we, the families, together with all the people of Israel, can begin the process of healing and recovery … A grave is not a privilege. A grave is a basic human right, without which personal and national recovery is impossible.”

The family called on leaders to “do everything necessary to reach an agreement that will return all 56 remaining hostages — the living for rehabilitation and the deceased for burial.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked the IDF soldiers and Shin Bet fighters who recovered the bodies and added, “We will not rest until we bring all of our hostages home, living and deceased.” 

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz sent condolences to the Weinstein-Haggai family and said that “the State of Israel is morally and nationally committed to returning our brothers and sisters, living and not living, and we will continue acting with determination until the mission is complete.”

The bodies of two American hostages, Itay Chen and Omer Neutra, remain in Gaza, out of a total of 56 hostages, 20 of whom are thought to be alive.

Every morning, Lishay Lavi Miran’s young daughters ask her the same two questions: Why is daddy still in Gaza and when is daddy coming home? 

In a desperate attempt to provide answers, Miran spent the past week in New York City — her first time in the U.S. — advocating for the release of her husband, Omri Miran, who was kidnapped from their home in Kibbutz Nahal Oz during the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attacks and has remained in Hamas captivity for nearly 600 days.   

The family received the first sign of life from Omri in April when Hamas terrorists published a video in which he is seen walking through a tunnel in Gaza. The video was released right around his 48th birthday. “It was difficult to see him in those conditions,” Miran told Jewish Insider during her visit to the states, which concluded on Tuesday. The “exhausted” man in the video was a contrast to the guy known for having “the biggest smile in the world and spark in his eyes,” as Miran describes her husband. 

Miran, who always dreamed of her first trip to America — but never could have imagined the dire circumstances under which it would come — participated in several meetings in New York to advocate for the release of the 58 hostages that remain held in Gaza. Together with other families of hostages and released survivors visiting the States, including Keith and Aviva Siegel, Miran met with government officials and Jewish leaders. Keith Siegel, who was released from Gaza in February in a U.S.-brokered deal, was at one point held in a Hamas tunnel together with Omri.  

Miran’s message to the American Jewish community is that its advocacy efforts have provided a “warming sense of hope.” 

“We know a lot of people are with us and we need you to continue telling our stories until the last one comes home,” she said. “Time is running out, at any second something can happen” to the remaining hostages in Gaza, where Israel launched an expanded ground operation this week. “We need to seal a deal,” Miran said.   

“We came so that everyone will remember there are still 58 hostages over there,” Miran, 40, told JI. About a third of those hostages are believed to be alive. More than a year and a half since Oct. 7, she understands “why people have stopped paying attention, it’s really a long time.” 

But back in Israel, two little girls haven’t turned their attention away for a second. Roni was 2 when her father was kidnapped and Alma was only 6 months old at the time. “Alma just knows him from photos and stories that Roni and I tell her. Every time she sees a photo she says, ‘I want to see daddy,’” said Miran, who remains displaced from the kibbutz.

“Roni remembers everything,” she continued, including witnessing Hamas kidnap her father when hundreds of terrorists infiltrated Nahal Oz. 

Miran describes herself as “the careerist in the family.” But after the Oct. 7 attacks, she left her job as a director of pre-academic programs at Sapir College and is a full-time advocate for the hostages. 

“For Omri, the most important thing is being a father. He stays at home with our daughters, takes them to school, that’s what he likes to do most,” she reflected.

“Omri is a survivor,” Miran said. “I know he is going to hear again the word ‘daddy.’”  

A former British-Israeli hostage who was held by Hamas in Gaza for 15 months spoke out against the Pulitzer Prize Board on Thursday for bestowing an award to a Palestinian poet who has disparaged victims of the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks and appeared to legitimize the abduction of hostages, among other comments that have stirred controversy.

Emily Damari, who in January was released from Hamas captivity after she was shot and taken from her home in Kibbutz Kfar Aza in southern Israel on Oct. 7, expressed outrage at the Pulitzer committee board over its decision to honor Mosab Abu Toha, a Gazan-born writer whose New Yorker essays on the war-torn enclave won the award for commentary on Monday.

In an anguished statement posted to social media, Damari, 28, voiced “shock and pain” that Abu Toha had won the prestigious award, citing his past remarks, uncovered earlier this week by the pro-Israel media watchdog HonestReporting, in which he denigrated Israeli captives abducted by Hamas and questioned their status as hostages, while also casting doubt on Israeli findings that a baby and a toddler kidnapped by the terror group were “deliberately” murdered in Gaza with “bare hands.”

“If you haven’t seen any evidence, why did you publish this,” Abu Toha said in a social media post in February, criticizing a BBC report on the murder of Kfir and Ariel Bibas, the young siblings who were abducted by Hamas. “Well, that’s what you are, filthy people.”

Elsewhere, Abu Toha, who is now a visiting scholar at Syracuse University, took aim directly at Damari, arguing that she could not be described as a hostage because, like most Israelis, she previously served as a soldier in the Israel Defense Forces. 

“How on earth is this girl called a hostage?” he said in a social media post in January, when Damari was among the first of three Israeli hostages to be freed amid a ceasefire deal that has since collapsed. “This soldier who was close to the border with a city that she and her country have been occupying is called a ‘hostage?’”

He likewise denounced another former Israeli hostage, Agam Berger, an IDF surveillance soldier freed in January. “These are the ones the world wants to share sympathy for, killers who join the army and have family in the army!” Abu Toha said in a social media post in February. “These are the ones whom CNN, BBC and the likes humanize in articles and TV programs and news bulletins.”

In her social media statement addressing the Pulitzer board on Thursday, Damari called Abu Toha “the modern-day equivalent of a Holocaust denier” and said that the committee had “joined him in the shadows of denial” by choosing to award his writing with one of the country’s top journalism prizes.

“This is a man who, in January, questioned the very fact of my captivity,” she wrote. “He posted about me on Facebook and asked, ‘How on earth is this girl called a hostage?’ He has denied the murder of the Bibas family. He has questioned whether Agam Berger was truly a hostage. These are not word games — they are outright denials of documented atrocities.”

Damari, who lost two fingers after she was shot in the left hand during the Hamas-led assault on Oct. 7, also recounted the harrowing circumstances of her nearly 500 days in captivity, writing that she had “lived in terror” as she was “starved, abused, and treated like I was less than human.”

“You claim to honor journalism that upholds truth, democracy, and human dignity,” Damari said in her statement to the Pulitzer board. “And yet you have chosen to elevate a voice that denies truth, erases victims, and desecrates the memory of the murdered. Do you not see what this means?”

“This is not a question of politics. This is a question of humanity. And today, you have failed it,” she concluded. 

The Pulitzer board did not respond to a request for comment from Jewish Insider on Thursday, nor did Abu Toha.