Veteran-led private teams are calling out the State Department for gaps in evacuation work after the opening days of the U.S.-Iran clash, saying government systems left Americans stranded while nonprofits moved fast to pull people out. The debate centers on whether the State Department truly offered help to every American who asked, or whether red tape and a scattered process forced families to look for help elsewhere. Grey Bull Rescue and lawmakers on the right say the government’s approach proves the need for a dedicated rescue point person and streamlined operations. This story follows conflicting accounts, on-the-ground experience and calls for structural change.
Bryan Stern, founder and CEO of Grey Bull Rescue, says the official account misses the reality in the field. “It’s not for lack of effort. Our State Department colleagues are tremendous. But their process doesn’t work. There is also no one — there’s no job specialty,” he told reporters, pointing to the absence of a single office or official focused on evacuations. Stern’s message is blunt: when rockets are falling and airspace is chaotic, bureaucratic processes do not move people fast enough.
The State Department has defended its actions, telling the public: “The State Department has reached out to every American who has registered interest in our support.” They added, “Most Americans who requested assistance have declined seats when offered, opting either to remain in country or book commercial flight options which offer greater flexibility in terms of destination and luggage.” That official line sits poorly with rescue teams who say offers and real-world rescue are not the same thing.
Stern rejects the government’s framing. “That answer is inaccurate in totality,” he said, and he explains why the difference matters. There’s a gap between being “offered assistance” in a spreadsheet and coordinating a guaranteed seat on an evacuation manifest that gets people to safety without days of uncertainty and phone trees.
Grey Bull Rescue and similar groups say they handle the human side differently, staying in constant touch with families and organizing flights with the manifest in hand. “We know them, we talk to them 10 times a day. The current manifest we’re working right now has 338 people on it. We do a Zoom call once a day with all the families. Because of that kind of thing, the chain between the person and the airplane is zero, because it’s us,” Stern said, describing a hands-on model that contrasts with scripted call centers.
He framed the alternative bluntly: “There’s a difference between a State Department-contracted aircraft that is filled with Americans to come out and getting them to safety. That’s an evacuation. That’s different from: ‘Hey, go book a commercial ticket. Good luck to you,’” Stern said, underscoring the difference between a coordinated rescue and passing people back to a commercial market in a crisis. That distinction is the center of the argument for more government specialization.
Rep. Nancy Mace, who joined Grey Bull Rescue operations in Israel, praised the boots-on-the-ground work but said the trip exposed systemic flaws. “It really opened my eyes to some of the challenges that we have, the bureaucracy that we have,” she said, and added, “I’m going to come back to Washington with some ideas on how to streamline what we currently have and how to ensure that we’re allocating resources to the State Department, to [the Department of Homeland Security].” Her tone is practical and reform-minded, calling for targeted fixes rather than political grandstanding.
Beyond anecdotes, the dispute touches logistics and scale. Stern described a flight that left Tel Aviv nearly empty while rescue teams were fielding hundreds of calls, a mismatch that feeds the narrative of inefficiency. State officials maintain offers of assistance outpaced demand on the ground, but private teams say offers logged into a database are not the same as getting boots on a plane when airspace is restricted and commercial options vanish.
The back-and-forth has real consequences for policy. Republican voices in Congress are pushing for a designated evacuation official or office that can move faster and coordinate across agencies and private partners. The pitch is straightforward: when American lives are in danger, the system should favor speed, clarity and a single accountable contact rather than diffused responsibility and scripted call centers.
Both sides note successes. Thousands of Americans returned to the United States in recent weeks, and government-assisted operations accounted for a large portion of those departures. Still, private rescuers and some lawmakers argue the numbers do not erase the operational problems they saw, and they are pressing for permanent changes to prevent the confusion that played out when conflict flared and time was short.
