foreign service

And then they tell the career civil servants and foreign service officers and military people, “This is what we want to get at the negotiating table. How do we do that?”

They’ve also fired the senior level of civil servants and foreign service officers, and a lot of the mid-levels are leaving, so that expertise isn’t there.

According to Daniel Byman, from Georgetown University's School of Foreign Service, Israel's move represents a new willingness to go against American preferences in the region.

While the actual implementation of those cuts remains uncertain, the State Department is already dismissing 20% of its domestic workforce, or about 3,400 employees, including a significant number of Foreign Service officers, special envoys, and cyber-security specialists.

And amid a federal hiring freeze, tests for the Foreign Service — men and women who staff U.S. embassies and consulates around the world, often for their entire professional lives — were put on hold.