Trump Sends USS Abraham Lincoln ‘Armada’ Toward Iran, Pledges Strike ‘Far Worse’ Than 2025 Attack

Great-power gunboat signaling is nothing new: in 1956 the U.S. massed the Sixth Fleet off Egypt to coerce Nasser, and in April 1988 Operation Praying Mantis saw U.S. warships clash directly with Iran after mining incidents. Like then, a superpower is leveraging sea power to dictate political terms to a regional rival that answers with asymmetric threats.The deployment underscores two long arcs: (1) the century-long U.S. reliance on carrier groups as mobile sovereignty—yet each decade they grow more vulnerable to cheaper missiles and drones, eroding deterrence math; (2) the steady unraveling of nuclear arms control since the 2018 JCPOA exit, pushing Iran toward threshold status and making periodic brinkmanship the new equilibrium.Whether this week matters in 2126 will hinge on energy transition and regional order. If the world still prizes Gulf shipping lanes, today’s choreography may be seen as another chapter in the Pax-Americana policing of oil. If not, historians may view the U.S. carrier era—symbolized by the Abraham Lincoln—as a late-stage display of declining utility, with Iran’s swarming drones foreshadowing how cheaper networks eventually check blue-water navies.