US CENTCOM Commander Admiral Brad Cooper testifies before the Senate Armed Services Committee on "The Posture of the U.S. Central Command and US Africa Command in Review" on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C., US, May 14, 2026. REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque/File Photo.
US military warns troops that social media help Iran assess strikes: Reuters
Note: AI technology was used to generate this article’s audio.
- CENTCOM warns posts help Iran assess strikes.
- US troops may be ordered to surrender phones.
- Admiral cites social media as security risk.
- Open-source footage aids Iranian battle assessment.
The top US commander for the Middle East, Admiral Brad Cooper, has issued a stark warning to deployed service members that online cellphone videos and public posts provide critical targeting data to Iranian forces, according to a Reuters report.
In a previously unreported letter dated July 28 obtained by Reuters, the head of US Central Command (CENTCOM) stated that Iran benefits from monitoring news reports, online journalist posts, and first-person footage from troops' mobile devices to evaluate the success or failure of its military strikes.
Phone confiscation considered
Sources told Reuters that some deployed service members in the region have already been told their mobile devices will be confiscated in the coming days.
A third source confirmed to Reuters that phone seizures are under consideration due to operational security concerns, though not yet presented as a certainty.
"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 in his letter, calling on personnel to "redouble our focus on operational security."
Addressing the memo, CENTCOM spokesperson Captain 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."
Smart glasses footage
Cooper's letter specifically referenced a recent incident where footage taken with Meta smart glasses during a deadly July 17 attack on a US Air Base was posted to Instagram, showing an evacuation to a shelter.
The admiral emphasized that US electronic jamming and defensive tactics usually leave Iranian forces unsure of their precision, according to Reuters.
"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," Cooper wrote, warning that public descriptions and media analyses perform Iran's Battle Damage Assessment (BDA) "free of charge" and could serve as "an immediate green light for Iranian forces to launch a secondary, much more devastating wave of attacks."
Broader context, political pressure
Any crackdown on personal devices adds a significant strain for the thousands of US personnel stationed across the Middle East who rely on phones to reassure family members at home.
The issue follows years of Pentagon warnings that mobile app location data can be harvested to track troop positions, Reuters reported.
Since the outbreak of hostilities on Feb. 28, 18 US troops have been killed and over 600 wounded, casualties that have deepened public skepticism in the US, where polling shows only one in three Americans support the conflict.
Meanwhile, Reuters noted that Democratic lawmakers continue to demand greater transparency from the administration, including data on base infrastructure damage and the status of an investigation into a US military strike on an Iranian girls' school on the war's opening day.
