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U.S. Marines and paratroopers, potentially poised for deployment in Iran, are actively engaging in Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear (CBRN) safety drills. These exercises are taking place at European bases and on ships en route to the Middle East.
According to a report from The National on Friday, advance units from the 82nd Airborne Division, recently flown from the United States to Europe, are being equipped with detection systems, gas masks, and protective gear known as “Mopp” coveralls in preparation for potential engagement in Iran.
Mission Oriented Protective Posture (MOPP) suits, akin to hazmat suits for military personnel, are designed to offer protection against hazardous environments. The alert system for MOPP varies in levels, with each requiring an increased amount of protective equipment as potential threats intensify.
Jonathan Hackett, a retired U.S. Marine Corps officer, informed The National that the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit is currently conducting CBRN drills aboard the amphibious assault ship USS Tripoli, bound for the Middle East. This vessel, comparable to a small aircraft carrier, is tasked with transporting Marines and their equipment to areas of conflict.
“The CBRN unit has the capacity to expand, yet traditional marine forces possess their own CBRN gear and regularly practice with it, aiming to don their masks and MOPP suits within 15 seconds when the command ‘Gas, gas, gas’ is issued,” Hackett elaborated.
Military analysts and hazardous materials specialists said there are several potential hazard scenarios in Iran, including damage to Iran’s Bushehr nuclear power plant, Iran’s elusive stockpile of near-weapons-grade uranium, inadvertent breaches of bunkers where Iran stores chemical weapons left over from the Iran-Iraq War in the 1980s, and the worst-case scenario of a desperate Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) loading chemical or biological payloads into its missiles.
Iran also helped Syrian dictator Bashar Assad develop his chemical weapons, and some analysts fear Iran might have reclaimed some of Assad’s inventory after he was driven from power in December 2024.
“They may well still be on bases somewhere, but it’s stronger than hearsay that some of these chemical weapons actually moved eastwards and are now either in Iraq or Iran,” chemical weapons specialist Lennie Phillips told The National.
Iran is known to have conducted research into biological weapons during the Iran-Iraq War, even though Iran signed the Biological Weapons Convention in 1973, six years before the revolution that brought the current Islamic Republic regime to power.
Iran’s bioweapons program seemed especially interested in developing anthrax, reportedly conducting much of the work in underground Syrian laboratories during Assad’s reign.
The U.S. State Department warned in 2019 that Iran was still conducting “research and development of biological agents and toxins for offensive purposes.”
In 2025, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI) upgraded this warning to say that Iran “very likely aims to continue R&D of chemical and biological agents for offensive purposes.”
Chemical and biological weapons research is especially easy to conduct under the guise of “dual-use” technologies that could also be employed for harmless or productive research, such as developing industrial chemicals or medicines. As the ODNI pointed out, chemical and biological payloads are much easier to load into ballistic missiles than nuclear warheads.
Chemical warfare specialist Hamis de Bretton-Gordon told The National that the United States, and perhaps the rest of the world, should draw a firm “red line” against Iran using weapons of mass destruction, no matter how desperate the regime becomes.
“There needs to be a Trump red line, which means something, which would be the most effective way of stopping these weapons being used. My concern is that if the Iranians run out of road, what do they do then, because this is in their psyche from the Iran-Iraq War,” Bretton-Gordon said.