SpyFace in the News: Adm. Mike Brookes, Chief of Naval Intelligence
As the Iran war rages, Brookes warily eyes China’s rush to build ICBM-armed submarines that can strike the U.S. with impunity
“I want each of our adversaries to wake up every morning, calculate the risk, and decide that today is not the day to pick a fight with the most powerful Navy in the world, the U.S. Navy,” Rear Admiral Mike Brookes, the head of U.S. Naval Intelligence, said at a conference two years ago.
On March 4, an Iranian frigate sailing in international waters, far from the Persian Gulf strife, didn’t “pick a fight” with the U.S. Navy but it got sunk anyway. The 300-foot-long IRIS Dena, the largest remaining warship in the Iranian fleet—but reportedly lightly or completely unarmed having just attended a multinational exercise with the Indian fleet—was sailing peacefully 20 miles south of Sri Lanka, about 2,200 miles from the Persian Gulf, when a single torpedo from the nuclear-powered USS Charlotte fast attack sub quickly took her down. Only 32 members from the crew of 130 survived. Some critics argued the Navy should have first offered the captain and crew an opportunity to defect.
In any event, Brookes probably had little to do with the attack. His office, tasked with keeping track of adversary vessels, may well have located the IRIS Dena for the White House and Pentagon, but U.S. spy satellites undoubtedly would have been looking for her, too. The order to shoot would have originated with Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. The vessel, he crowed afterward, “thought it was safe in international waters,” but instead “died a quiet death.” His celebration appears premature, now that Iran has effectively choked off the Strait of Hormuz, a prospect analysts had warned about for years. The mighty U.S. Navy has not taken steps to escort oil tankers through the narrow waters, despite President Trump’s promises.
Whatever the ethics and point of the IRIS Dena’s sinking, meanwhile, some observers said it sent a message to China, which gets 92 per cent of its oil by sea, according to a May 2025 report from the U.S. Energy Information Administration. “Ultimately, the Indian Ocean is emerging as a critical arena in great-power competition, where U.S. naval power threatens China’s energy lifelines even as China expands its regional footprint and hedges with continental alternatives,” the Asia Times noted last week.
Until the runup to the Iran war, when determining the disposition of the Islamic Republic’s ships was the ONI’s immediate task, China was at the top of Brookes’s concerns.
