The new US advisory includes countries such as Oman, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates and Egypt, and is the strongest travel advisory the US State Department can issue. The advisory cites serious security risks after an attack on Iran by the US and Israel on Saturday.
Svante Liljegren, head of the Swedish Foreign Ministry's consular unit, told TT on Tuesday morning that this is, of course, important information that Swedes in the region should take into account.
Even though it is not a Swedish call, it signals that this is a serious situation, and that the situation may develop in an unexpected direction. It is a purely precautionary measure that should, of course, be taken.
Safest to stay
For its part, the Swedish Ministry of Foreign Affairs urges Swedes to leave Iran and Yemen; otherwise lower levels of advice apply - and in some cases there is no advice at all for the countries the US has now identified as too dangerous to stay in.
But the risk to Americans in the region may be greater than for Swedes.
Stranded Swedes have criticized the Ministry of Foreign Affairs for not trying to bus them out to neighboring countries.
Given that there are so many of them, we believe it is best to "shelter in place", as they say, to stay in the hotels where you are and not expose yourself to that type of risk. But we are planning based on many different scenarios right now, Liljegren said.
Positive sign
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs has established a crisis staff that monitors the international situation and security, especially for Swedes who are in Iran but also in neighboring countries.
This way we can work 24/7 for a long time. There's nothing strange about it at all; we do it quite often.
On Monday and Tuesday, several flights were able to take off, primarily from the United Arab Emirates.
These are positive signs in any case. The more flights that operate, the better. But we are talking about thousands and thousands of stranded passengers. One should not overinterpret this to mean that the situation is back to normal.
For Sweden, there are three different levels of advice. The first is from “non-essential travel”, which is tourist and visitor travel. The next level is “all travel”, which also includes other travel, such as work travel. The highest advice is a “call to leave the country”, which is only issued when there is an imminent danger to life and health.
Currently, Swedes in Iran and Yemen are being urged to leave the country, and “all travel” advice applies to Iraq and Lebanon (with some exceptions that have lower-level advice), the Palestinian territories and Israel.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs advises against non-essential travel to Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar (transit not included), Kuwait and Jordan.
For Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the advice applies to certain vulnerable areas.
