The USS Abraham Lincoln’s more than seven-month deployment drew public attention to living conditions aboard the San Diego-based carrier. Experts say those conditions worsened as the deployment stretched on, a consequence of the Trump administration’s decision to enter the conflict with Iran without a clear plan to end it.
The administration presented the operation as a limited-effort military endeavor to eliminate Iran’s nuclear and military capabilities and coax the country to the negotiating table. But as the conflict dragged on, the administration’s stated goals and timeline evolved, raising questions about what would constitute an acceptable end to the war.
“They thought the war would finish quickly; that the sailors would be home, and so the story of the USS Lincoln, in many ways, just symbolizes the complete incoherence of U.S. Middle East policy today under Donald Trump,” said Nader Hashemi, an associate professor of Middle East and Islamic politics at Georgetown University. “The Trump administration completely misread how difficult this war against Iran would be.”
The USS Lincoln departed San Diego last November, initially focused on patrolling the Indo-Pacific. The aircraft carrier was redirected to the Middle East as U.S.-Iran tensions grew.
“It exposes that there was no plan for an extended, protracted war,” said Andy Kopp, a U.S. Navy and military intelligence veteran. “They clearly thought that they could come in with overwhelming force and cause the regime in Iran to capitulate — and that didn’t happen. When that didn’t happen, there was no backup plan.”
The Defense Department launched Operation Epic Fury on Feb. 28, striking Iranian military and nuclear facilities.
Iran responded by attacking a regional logistics hub in Bahrain, complicating food, fuel and supply delivery to the U.S. carrier strike group, including the USS Lincoln.
Kopp said the “gross miscalculations, or frankly, just ignoring well-understood intelligence,” left the carrier’s crew to take on the burden of a nearly year-long war.
The USS Lincoln and other ships in the region were forced to rely on a U.K.-operated island in the Indian Ocean called Diego Garcia for supplies and support.
Kristian Coates Ulrichsen, a fellow for the Middle East at Rice University’s Baker Institute and co-director of the Middle East Energy Roundtable, said attacks on onshore facilities mean longer gaps between shore visits and increased complications for resupplying.
“Any prolonged and open-ended conflict would probably put the existing military and naval resources under great strain,” he said. “A lot of the logistical support networks that had made those deployments possible are now themselves under significant weakness.”
In early August, media reports indicated the USS Lincoln was experiencing food shortages, plumbing problems and that the conditions were affecting crew morale and their mental health. Reports surfaced describing two alleged overboard incidents involving sailors.
The Navy disputed the reports of deteriorating and substandard living conditions on the carrier — saying the number of mental health-related cases aboard the USS Lincoln ranked among the lowest of the Navy’s 11 active carriers.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said the reports were “completely misrepresented.” President Donald Trump downplayed concerns, saying the ship had been out “not nearly long enough,” as the vessel hit a record-setting more than 250 days at sea without a port call.
The Trump administration continues to push back its timeline for ending the war — most recently unleashing new economic pressure to isolate the country.
Ross Harrison, a senior fellow at the Middle East Institute and author of the book “Decoding Iran’s Foreign Policy,” said Iran likely won’t end the war without creating deterrence for the U.S. to come back.
“(Iran) would rather prolong the war than end the war prematurely … They have to create deterrence,” he said. “All the bluster from the White House tells the Iranians is, ‘Well, the U.S. hasn’t gotten the point yet, so we can’t trust them. We can’t negotiate with them because we can’t trust them to even act upon their memorandum of understanding, and we can’t trust the fact that this is not just a temporary pause to rearm, replenish and come back.’”
Harrison said Iran has learned from the downfall of other regimes at the hands of the U.S. and been “preparing for this conflict for the last 47 years.”
He said the Trump Administration’s original plan for a short operation was “fanciful” without clear objectives.
“It was a very, very crude, incoherent political endgame. They used very discreet, very clear military means, but those means were kind of detached from the political endgame,” Harrison said. “When that happens, you have what we have now — you’re drawn into a conflict you can’t get out of because you don’t know … the measures of success you had going in are no longer achievable, (and) you don’t have new measures of success.”
Rice University’s Coates Ulrichsen said he doesn’t predict an end to the war anytime soon after seeing current negotiations where Iran is pushing for only commercial ships to be allowed in the Strait of Hormuz.
“The Iranians would very much like to say that only commercial ships can go in and out, which would of course close the Gulf to … ships like the USS Lincoln,” Coates Ulrichsen said. “I mean that would be a complete non-starter for the U.S.”
Coates Ulrichsen said that while the war started with the goal to take out Iran’s nuclear powers and topple the regime, it has now brought tensions to the Strait of Hormuz.
“What the Trump administration is now trying to do is basically get back to a situation in the Strait of Hormuz that wasn’t an issue before February 28th,” he said. “(That) illustrates just how much of a debacle this has been… now it seems to be the main issue that they’re trying to resolve … (which) deflects away from bigger issues — like the nuclear issue.”
Adding to that, Coates Ulrichsen said he saw little evidence that a plan B existed.
“Those are the miscalculations — that you eliminate the leadership, and that’s going to be sufficient for the regime to crack and then to fall,” he said. “The first day was extremely successful in that respect. You had very, very senior figures taken out, but it clearly didn’t lead to … the sweeping away of the regime. So I think that was the initial assumption.”
The USS George Washington arrived in the Middle East last week to relieve the USS Lincoln as the war continued without a clear end in sight and as Hegseth’s military leadership continues to be questioned.
“The Secretary of Defense wakes up every day to battle the press instead of fighting for his sailors,” added military veteran and expert Andy Kopp. “He owes it to every service member to stop being a dilettante and start thinking seriously about managing the Department of Defense and the commands underneath his charge.”
