The top US commander for the Middle East warned troops that cellphone videos shared online are helping Iran target American bases with deadly precision, and sources said some deployed personnel could soon be ordered to surrender their phones. Admiral Brad Cooper, head of US Central Command, said in a July 28 letter that Iran was benefiting from being able to see the success or failure of its strikes in near real time by searching news reports or online posts by journalists referencing "reactions, photos, and footage from the cellphones of our troops." The warning came as 18 US troops have died in the conflict with Iran that started on February 28, and more than 600 have been wounded.
The Operational Security Crisis
Cooper wrote that "the direct, unavoidable cost of this open-source intelligence could be measured in the lives of American service members and civilian residents in targeted Gulf countries," and called on troops to "redouble our focus on operational security," without prescribing specific steps in the memo. A US Central Command spokesperson, Captain Timothy Hawkins, said: "The message is a general reminder to our service members on the importance of maintaining operational security. This is one of many opportunities Admiral Cooper has used to convey operational priorities."
Cooper cited a video posted online this month showing a US service member recording soldiers running for shelter during a deadly Iranian attack on the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan on July 17. He said the footage had been recorded on Meta smart glasses with a built-in camera. "Video captured from a service member's Meta glasses was posted on Instagram showing where and how the individual had evacuated to a bunker during an Iranian missile and drone attack," Cooper wrote.
How Iran Exploits Social Media
Cooper explained that Iran would normally have a tough time determining the success or failure of its strikes because of US military electronic jamming or other tactics used in war zones. "Iran knows the weapons were fired; however, their forces do not know if they missed by 50 meters, hit an empty tarmac, or successfully struck a crowded facility," he wrote. "Detailed lists, descriptions, and analyses of what was hit, openly published by news outlets, are essentially performing Iran's Battle Damage Assessment (BDA) for them, free of charge," Cooper said. He added that "detailed public disclosures can become an immediate green light for Iranian forces to launch a secondary, much more devastating wave of attacks."
In Jordan, which has been a frequent target of Iranian strikes, some troops have been told their phones will be confiscated in the coming days, two sources familiar with the matter said. A third source said such a move was being considered in the region because of operational security concerns but didn't present the confiscation as certain. The possible seizure of phones has stoked anxiety among some family members, already on edge in recent months as they read Iranian claims of deadly strikes on bases throughout the Middle East, two of the sources said.
The Broader Intelligence Threat
US officials have cautioned for years that certain applications on mobile devices, like fitness applications, can be exploited by adversaries to aid adversary targeting because of location data. Reuters reported in May that commercially available location data harvested from smartphones or other devices has been used to target or surveil US forces. At the same time, the Pentagon has sought to carefully control the release of information because of what it says are operational security concerns, often declining to comment on Iran's attack claims or detail individual incidents that led to injuries of US troops.
The mounting casualties have deepened Americans' concerns about a war that just one in three Americans support. Democratic lawmakers have called for more information about the war, including details about damage to US infrastructure on bases including radar towers, barracks and aircraft hangars. They've also called for the release of a US military investigation into a likely US strike on a girls' school in Iran, first reported by Reuters, on the opening day of the war on Feb. 28.
Why This Matters:
Iran's ability to weaponize open-source intelligence from troops' social media posts reveals a fundamental asymmetry in modern warfare: democracies that value transparency and free expression face adversaries who exploit those very freedoms to kill their soldiers. With more than 600 US troops wounded and 18 killed since February, the conflict has become a grinding war of attrition in which Tehran refines its targeting through information Americans themselves provide. The potential confiscation of phones in Jordan underscores how serious the threat has become, but it also highlights the impossible tension between maintaining troop morale through family contact and denying Iran the battlefield intelligence it needs to launch follow-on strikes. Cooper's warning that detailed public reporting gives Iran "an immediate green light" for secondary attacks shows how the information environment itself has become a weapon system. As the Pentagon struggles to balance operational security with democratic accountability, Iran continues to benefit from a media ecosystem that inadvertently performs its battle damage assessment at no cost.