In the early days of Operation Epic Fury, as Gulf states absorbed hundreds of Iranian drones and missiles, the US faced a crisis helping its citizens evacuate from the region. Improvising, American diplomats in Abu Dhabi phoned a friend: Canada.

No formal agreement exists between the US and Canada to cooperate on consular services, so a plan was hastily arranged for the Canadian embassy to serve as a pickup point for handing out new and renewed US passports so citizens could evacuate. That US foreign service members turned to their Canadian counterparts is surprising, given the two countries’ strained relationship under the Trump administration, which has levied tariffs while the president has repeatedly called for making the longtime ally “the 51st state.”

But the Canadian embassy “did not hesitate. The answer was an immediate yes,” a senior State Department official told Semafor, asking not to be named because the information isn’t public.

“We were kind of stuck,” the official added. “We had all these passports arriving by FedEx from the print facility in the United States” but “we didn’t have a location to give them out.”

The Canadian embassy in the UAE and Canada’s government media office did not respond to a request for comment.