[Congressional Record Volume 172, Number 40 (Tuesday, March 3, 2026)]
[House]
[Page H2346]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  PROTECTING AMERICANS IN MIDDLE EAST

  (Mr. SUBRAMANYAM asked and was given permission to address the House 
for 1 minute and to revise and extend his remarks.)
  Mr. SUBRAMANYAM. Mr. Speaker, we will obviously be talking about the 
Iran war this week, but something that is not getting enough attention 
right now is the 300,000 U.S. citizens in the region who are stranded 
because we sent all this firepower to the region.
  If we are going to attack Iran, why didn't we have a plan to get 
American citizens out of the region? Someone just asked President Trump 
that question. Here is what he said: ``Well, because it happened all 
very quickly. We thought, and I thought maybe more so than most--I 
could ask Marco--but I thought we were going to have a situation where 
we were going to be attacked. They were getting ready to attack 
Israel.''
  Mr. Speaker, I don't even know what that means. What I think is that 
with all that military firepower in the region, we could have given 
them a little bit of warning or at least more than just what we gave 
them.
  Instead, only now are they being told to evacuate the region--with 
one caveat, though. They are on their own because there are barely any 
commercial flights going in and out of the region.
  While hotels are being attacked and everything appears to be a 
target, this administration is not doing enough to help.
  We should have seen this coming. Why aren't we valuing American lives 
more in the region? The administration was just telling them tough 
luck.
  Mr. Speaker, this should be a national priority. If we are going to 
spend billions on jets and bombs, we can afford to evacuate Americans. 
We need to get serious right now about protecting Americans in the 
Middle East.

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