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Tehran, Iran – Suitcases are rolling through Tehran, but this time, it’s not for holidays or family celebrations. They are being packed in haste and out of fear – symbols of the growing anxiety gripping the Iranian capital’s 10 million residents as they face Israeli missiles.

While Iranians scramble to find shelter, dual Iranian-American nationals find themselves caught in the crossfire of war and geopolitical uncertainty.

Amir, a 36-year-old Tesla engineer and dual national, travelled to Tehran from the United States just weeks before Israeli air strikes began hitting targets across Iran. He had been visiting family and spending quiet days with them on Mount Damavand, located roughly 60 kilometres northeast of the capital. His return flight to the US was already booked, but a few days before he was scheduled to travel, Israel launched its attacks.

When the bombs started to fall, Amir found himself gripped by fear, not just of war, but of being drafted and becoming a casualty of politics beyond his control.

“I wasn’t scared at first. Being with my family brought me peace,” said Amir, who preferred not to share his last name for security reasons. He recalled how he had actually been more worried about his family’s safety during the 2022 Iran antigovernment protests, watching from afar in the US. “Back then, I was constantly anxious, glued to the news, worrying about my family. But now, being in Tehran and Damavand, I could see that life was still going on,” he said.

But he soon decided it was too risky to remain in Iran. A US Green Card holder, Amir dreaded the growing possibility of President Donald Trump reintroducing a travel ban on Iranians and feared it would include those with permanent residency, like himself. With a sense of urgency, Amir chose to leave.

Crossing borders, leaving loved ones

Fearing for his life and his future, Amir began a long overland journey. On Monday, he left by overnight bus for the western Iranian city of Urmia, an 11-hour journey. From there, he continued by road to Van, in eastern Turkiye, which took another six hours. He then boarded a domestic flight to Ankara, from where he flew to the US on Thursday.

For Amir, fleeing wasn’t just a logistical challenge; it was emotionally traumatic. “If it weren’t for the fear of being conscripted and the possibility of a new Trump-era travel ban, I would have stayed close to my loved ones,” he said. “It’s harder in the US.”

Behrouz, a 41-year-old postdoctoral researcher based in San Francisco, faced a similar choice. He had been visiting his hometown of Mashhad, in northeastern Iran, when it was struck by one of Israel’s longest-range missile attacks.

“I tried to stay calm for the first two days,” he recalled. “But then, I had to face the reality: this conflict is nothing like the past. At least for the coming months, the sky won’t be clear or open.”

Traditionally, Behrouz would end his trips to Iran with a walk through the courtyard of the Imam Reza Holy Shrine, picking up saffron and sweets for colleagues back in the US. But this time, he left in a rush. The journey was long: 10 hours by car to Tehran, another nine to Urmia, and then across the Razi border crossing into Turkiye. “It took about 20 minutes to get through the checkpoint,” he said, but what followed was a gruelling 22-hour bus ride to Istanbul.

Behrouz explained he had to leave because of his job. “But my heart is still there with my family, and with the people,” he said, his voice breaking.

“We are against both Israel and the Iranian regime,” he added. “We are millions of ordinary Iranians caught in the middle of decisions made by politicians who don’t represent us.”

Behrouz’s words echo the quiet desperation of many others. Azerbaijani media reported that about 600 Iranian-American dual nationals had crossed out of northwestern Iran via the Astara border into southern Azerbaijan with support from the US embassy. Online, travel coordination flourished in Iranian-American Facebook groups. One user asked: “My flight was scheduled for late June. Should I try to exit through Armenia or Turkiye?” Another advised: “Bring extra fuel. Gas stations are limiting purchases to 10 litres per car.” Some even pooled resources to rent a van for the journey to the Turkish border.

For those managing to leave, the logistics are complex – but often less painful than the emotional burden.

Staying behind – and getting cut off

Not everyone is leaving. Afsaneh, a 43-year-old lifestyle blogger and mother who lives in northern California, had flown to Iran with her seven-year-old daughter before the war began. Despite US State Department warnings urging citizens to leave, she wrote on Instagram that she had no intention of returning – at least for now.

“This is where I want to be,” she wrote in a recent post. “With my family, during this time.”

Others have had no choice but to watch from afar as their loved ones live through the strikes.

Maryam Mortazavi, a 38-year-old Iranian-Canadian living in Toronto, had sent her parents and sister on a summer trip to Iran just two weeks before the air strikes began. Ten days into their stay, bombs hit the northwestern city of Tabriz near their residence.

“I was on a blurry video call with them, hearing explosions and air defence systems,” Mortazavi said. Her family fled to nearby Urmia for safety. By Wednesday afternoon, the Iranian government had shut down internet access. Maryam lost all contact with them.

“I can’t even get out of bed – I’m so worried,” she said, breaking down. “I just hope they find a working VPN and reach me.”

This piece was published in collaboration with Egab.

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Marco Rubio has been thrown into two top national security jobs at once as President Trump presses forward with his top-to-bottom revamp of U.S. foreign policy, upending not only long-standing policies that the former Florida senator once supported but also the configuration of the executive branch.

Trump’s appointment of Rubio to temporarily replace Mike Waltz as national security advisor is the first major leadership shake-up of his second administration, but Waltz’s removal had been rumored for weeks — ever since he created a Signal group chat and accidentally added a journalist to the conversation in which top national security officials shared sensitive military plans.

So, just over 100 days into his tenure as America’s top diplomat, Rubio now becomes just the second person to hold both positions. He follows only the late Henry Kissinger, who served as both secretary of State and national security advisor for two years under Presidents Nixon and Ford in the 1970s.

Rubio — a onetime Trump rival and hawkish conservative who was derided by the president as “Little Marco” during the 2016 presidential campaign — has proven adept at aligning himself with Trump’s “America First” foreign policy positions. Rubio has largely eschewed his staunch advocacy of providing foreign aid and promoting democracy overseas since taking over the State Department, repeating a refrain that every policy or program should make America safer, stronger or more prosperous.

Rubio leads during Trump’s massive changes

Since being confirmed in a 99-0 Senate floor vote, Rubio has presided over a radical reorganization of the State Department. That includes the dismantling of the U.S. Agency for International Development and plans to cut U.S. jobs by 15% while closing or consolidating more than 100 bureaus worldwide. He has also begun a major cull of the visa system, revoking hundreds, if not thousands, of visas issued to foreign students.

He has overseen the negotiation of agreements to send immigrants accused of crimes to third countries, most notably to El Salvador, in cases that are now being challenged in federal courts.

“Marco Rubio, unbelievable,” Trump said Thursday before announcing on social media that Waltz would be nominated as ambassador to the United Nations and Rubio would take over as national security advisor in the interim. “When I have a problem, I call up Marco, he gets it solved.”

That’s a far cry from 2016, when Rubio and Trump were competing for the GOP presidential nomination and Rubio warned that Trump was a threat. After Trump won, the relationship remained contentious, but eight years later, Rubio was an enthusiastic Trump supporter who worked his Florida bona fides to get into the president’s inner circle.

Yet, even after Rubio was nominated to the top diplomatic job, doubts remained. Many pundits suggested he would last only a short time in office before Trump dismissed him in the same way he did his first-term secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, who was fired by tweet in 2018 just 18 months into the job.

Yet Rubio has been resilient. And as of Thursday, he oversees both the State Department and the National Security Council, which is responsible for coordinating all executive branch foreign policy functions, ranging from diplomatic to military and intelligence operations.

Thomas Wright, an NSC official during the Biden administration who is now a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, said the national security advisor post alone is “more than a full-time job.”

“It is just very hard to comprehend the idea that you can do this job sort of part time,” Wright said.

He said he watched national security advisor Jake Sullivan and his deputy work 14-15 hours a day, six to seven days a week: “I think they felt that they had to do that to do the job properly.”

Rubio says little so far on his additional role

Appearing Thursday night on Fox News Channel’s “Hannity,” Rubio was not asked to weigh in on the president’s decision to tap him as national security advisor but did joke that he was barred from adding pope to his list of many jobs because he is married.

But as he marked the first 100 days of Trump’s latest term, Rubio applauded the president for his vision.

“I am honored by the trust President Trump placed in me and I am proud of the work the Department of State has done over the past hundred days to implement his agenda and put the American people first,” he wrote Wednesday in a State Department Substack post.

One of Rubio’s former Florida statehouse colleagues, Dan Gelber, a Democrat, said of Rubio’s increasing responsibilities that “Marco is probably, to a certain extent, one of the more reliable Cabinet officers, if not the most reliable.”

“And I can only believe those qualities are even more vital to his current confluence of positions and growing portfolio,” Gelber said. “He’s not a chaos guy, and I’ve always sort of wondered how he’s going to do in an administration where there seems to be so much chaos. And maybe that’s why he’s getting all these positions.”

Rubio’s dual-hatted role comes on top of him serving as acting administrator of the largely shut down USAID and as acting head of the National Archives. It puts him in a similar position to that of Trump’s longtime personal friend and golfing buddy Steve Witkoff.

As a special envoy, Witkoff is the lead U.S. negotiator in the Iran nuclear talks and in administration peace efforts for the Israel-Hamas war and the Ukraine-Russia war.

In many ways, Rubio and Witkoff are following in the footsteps of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, who had multiple roles in the first administration, ranging from brokering peace in the Middle East to dealing with Latin America and immigration.

How Rubio’s expanded duties are seen at the State Department

State Department officials appeared taken aback by Trump’s appointment of Rubio as acting national security advisor. Spokeswoman Tammy Bruce said at a briefing Thursday that she learned the news from a journalist who asked her a question about Trump’s post minutes after it appeared on social media.

Officials, however, have noted that Rubio in recent weeks has spent an increasingly large amount of time at the White House away from his posh seventh-floor State Department office in what is known as “Mahogany Row,” a corridor known for its wood paneling.

At the same time, these officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss the personnel shift, said they did not expect Rubio’s duties as secretary of State to change significantly. He still plans to travel on diplomatic missions abroad and likely will delegate at least some of the NSC management to others, they said.

Lee and Amiri write for the Associated Press. Amiri reported from the United Nations.