The admiral navigating the battlefield — and the politics of Trump’s Iran war | CNN Politics

In the summer of 2024, the threat to maritime shipping in the Red Sea was at its peak. Houthi rebels in Yemen were firing on international vessels, forcing marine traffic to avoid one of the world’s most critical waterways and to sail thousands of miles around Africa instead. By August, they sank two ships and killed several crew members, as US and UK strikes failed to deter them. Vice Adm. Brad Cooper, then the No. 2 at US Central Command, needed to see the problem for himself. Cooper, who was in charge of coming up with a plan to combat the Houthis, knew the waters well as former commander of the Navy’s Fifth Fleet based in Bahrain, said Dan Shapiro, who worked at the Defense Department on Middle East Affairs. Experiencing the problem firsthand meant that Cooper would be placing himself under the command of officers far junior to himself. “Rather than just take in the reports of the commanders of those vessels, he went out and sailed with them. He put himself in harm’s way,” Shapiro told CNN. “It says something about his understanding of the connection between the real-time details on the ground and the strategy.” Two years later, Cooper, now an admiral, is in charg