The story about to dominate defense coverage this week already has its argument backward. USS Abraham Lincoln is heading home after nearly nine months deployed, and most of the coverage will treat that endurance as proof that the aircraft carrier still matters against a country mostly hit by other things this war.
The real proof of what a carrier is for showed up quietly a few weeks in, when the mission stopped being about dropping ordnance and became about simply refusing to leave.
Lincoln left San Diego in November.
The strikes that opened this war in late February pulled in B-2s, Tomahawks, F-35s, and a swarm of cheap one-way attack drones alongside her air wing, and there was nothing uniquely carrier-shaped about that phase of the fight.
Washington then imposed a naval blockade on Iranian ports in April. It lifted the blockade in June under a short-lived understanding with Tehran, then put it back in place on July 14 when that understanding collapsed.
It has been running since, with no talks scheduled and, according to Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, no fixed end date.
Add the two stretches together, and the blockade comes to a little over three months, well short of Lincoln’s nine months.
The real question is what Lincoln was actually asked to do in each stretch, and which one needed a carrier.
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