U.S. troops deployed to the Middle East are bracing for the seizure of their phones after a viral video of a deadly Iranian attack left President Donald Trump answering for the deaths of two soldiers, according to a new report.
The top U.S. commander for the Middle East warned troops in a July 28 letter that cellphone videos shared online were helping Iran assess the damage from its own strikes, Reuters reported.
In Jordan, some troops have already been told their phones will be taken in the coming days, Reuters reported.
Footage posted by the open-source account OSINTtechnical on X circulated on July 17 before CENTCOM confirmed that two American service members had been killed at Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan during an Iranian missile and drone attack, Times Now reported.
Reuters reported that the prospect of confiscations was already rattling families at home — writing that “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.”
Admiral Brad Cooper, head of CENTCOM, argued in his letter that open-source reporting was effectively doing Iran’s targeting work for them.
“Detailed lists, descriptions, and analyses of what was hit, openly published by news outlets are essentially performing Iran’s Battle Damage Assessment [a military term for evaluating strike damage] for them, free of charge,” Cooper wrote, Reuters reported.
A service member’s Meta smart glasses recorded footage posted to Instagram showing troops evacuating to a bunker during the July 17 attack — the kind of open-source exposure, Cooper wrote, that forced Trump to defend the war publicly before the Pentagon could control the narrative.
Speaking to the New York Post shortly after the attack, Trump deflected Democratic criticism by invoking prior conflicts.
“Have you ever asked how many people died in Vietnam? Have you ever asked how many people died in Afghanistan in one day? In one day — run by Sleepy Joe Biden,” Trump said.
“And it’s a shame, but in this case, they died because they don’t want to see Iran have a nuclear weapon and they don’t want to see the Middle East blown up,” Trump told the Post.
Russia banned smartphones for soldiers in 2019 after open-source journalists used troops’ social media posts to expose secret military operations in Ukraine and Syria, the BBC reported.
Cooper stopped short of ordering specific steps, and a third source told Reuters the confiscations were not yet confirmed region-wide.
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