A small non-profit organization that specializes in rescuing Americans in conflict zones has been flooded with requests since the Middle East erupted following the U.S. and Israeli strikes against Iran last Saturday.
Grey Bull Rescue — a veteran-led, donor-funded nonprofit organization — has received between 700-800 requests since the start of the conflict less than a week ago, Bryan Stern, the group’s founder and chairman, told the Washington Examiner.
Many of those requests, he specified, are for larger groups of people, like families or religious groups that were overseas at the time the fighting commenced. They have already been able to safely help somewhere in the ballpark of 200 people.
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“We’ve got more requests than we know what to do with,” Stern said. “Lots and lots and lots of people asking for help from all over the place.”
The bulk of their missions so far have been in Israel, though they are in the middle of doing some operations in the United Arab Emirates.
The current environment in the Middle East has unique challenges, unlike many of the other conflict zones where they’ve evacuated Americans in need. Multiple countries in the region have shut down their airspace and some airports have been damaged due to Iranian ballistic missile and drone attacks.
Iran successfully struck airports in Dubai, Abu Dhabi, and Doha in retaliation for the weekend operations by the United States and Israel. Those three airports are major hubs for international travel, and the continued launch of Iranian strikes has made airlines skittish about take-off.
The U.S. is far from the only country that is trying to gets its citizens out of the region.
“Iran is directing tremendous firepower at the Gulf countries to maximize the economic cost of this war on these states,” said Annika Ganzeveld the Middle East Portfolio Manager for the Critical Threats Project at the American Enterprise Institute.
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That disruption, spread across massive geographic distances, has made transportation through the frantic airspace “more complex,” Stern said.
“In this case, there’s like 13 countries with messed up airspace, or whatever it is,” he added. “So because of that, our denied area for air is so much bigger and diverse than what we’re used to.”
The State Department released evacuation data on Thursday indicating that 20,000 Americans have returned home from the Middle East since the war began. Roughly half of those citizens made their own arrangements, while the other half were assisted by the State Department — whether by ground transportation to operating airports or by logistical assistance securing seats on a commercial plane.
Grey Bull Rescue operates completely on private donations without any government support, which Stern said is holding them back from being able to rescue everyone who has reached out.
“How crazy is it that I can save every one of these lives, and I just need some financial help,” he said, adding that his “biggest fear” is that “people are asking me for help” and he has to say no for “purely financial” reasons.
The rescue organization initially stood up in the summer of 2021 amid the U.S. military’s withdrawal from Afghanistan. The Taliban overthrew the U.S.-backed government in mid-August, only about two weeks before the military’s set withdrawal date, and that prompted countless Americans to look to leave the country before it was too late.
The U.S. military, aided by the State Department, carried out the largest noncombatant evacuation operations, helping more than 100,000 Americans or Afghan allies before the military departed for the final time.
More recently, Grey Bull Rescue was involved in helping Venezuelan opposition leader María Corina Machado escape from her home country in mid-December. She had spent nearly a year in hiding from the regime of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, whom U.S. forces captured in early January and brought back to the United States to stand trial on charges dating back to 2020.
The group has completed more than 800 evacuations since its founding, Stern said.