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The U.S. military may soon order some troops deployed in the Middle East to surrender their personal cellphones, Reuters reported, after the top U.S. commander for the region warned that videos and photos shared online by service members are helping Iran assess the success of its strikes.
Adm. Brad Cooper, head of U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM), wrote in a previously unreported July 28 letter, a copy of which Reuters obtained, that Iran has benefited from being able to gauge the outcome of its attacks in near real time by monitoring news reports and online posts referencing "reactions, photos, and footage from the cellphones of our troops."
"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," Cooper wrote, according to Reuters.
He called on troops to "redouble our focus on operational security" without prescribing specific steps in the memo.
Cooper explained that Iran would normally struggle to determine whether its strikes succeeded, given U.S. electronic jamming and other battlefield countermeasures.
"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, warning that public disclosures "can become an immediate green light for Iranian forces to launch a secondary, much more devastating wave of attacks."
Cooper appeared to reference a specific incident: a video posted online this month showed a U.S. service member recording footage, apparently via Meta smart glasses, as soldiers ran for shelter during the deadly July 17 Iranian attack on Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan.
"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.
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 told Reuters.
A third source said such a measure was under consideration regionally due to operational security concerns, but did not describe confiscation as certain.
CENTCOM spokesperson Capt. Timothy Hawkins told Reuters: "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."
Reuters reported the possible seizure of phones has stoked anxiety among some military family members, who have already been on edge in recent months reading Iranian claims of strikes on U.S. bases throughout the region.
This is not the first reported instance of digital vulnerabilities affecting U.S. forces in the region during the war.
The Financial Times reported earlier in July that mobile networks across the Middle East were repeatedly hit with SS7-style tracking attempts aimed at pinpointing the locations of U.S. military personnel and contractors, beginning in the buildup to the February strikes and continuing into the war's early days, according to telecom data reviewed by the Mobile Surveillance Monitor research project.
The Financial Times reported that Gulf officials suspected Iran or its allies of exploiting roaming agreements with local phone providers, and that a separate U.S. official believed Iran-linked actors had used commercially available advertising data to track phones in Iraq's northern region.
Gary Miller, a senior research fellow at Citizen Lab who reviewed the data for the Financial Times, said: "Iran absolutely has capabilities to get real-time, immediate, and continuous location information... It would surprise me very much if Iran were not using SS7, or mobile network access in the region, to track U.S. users."
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