Spare a thought for the sailors of the U.S.S. Abraham Lincoln. As the United States’ campaign against Iran drags on, their deployment aboard the aircraft carrier has already lasted months longer than planned, and has spawned myriad news reports about deteriorating conditions—including dwindling supplies of food and potable water—and fraying morale. Last week, citing relatives of service members, the Military Times reported that at least two people on the Lincoln had attempted to jump overboard. After touring the vessel over the weekend, Admiral Brad Cooper, the head of Central Command, acknowledged “uniquely challenging and tough” circumstances, but he also described “many elements” of the grim situation as “old news” that had already been addressed; President Donald Trump branded the whole discussion as “fake news.” Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said that conditions had been “completely misrepresented” and told reporters that the United States could maintain its ongoing naval blockade of Iranian ports “indefinitely.”
Spare a thought, too, for the Iranian people, who have been on the receiving end of 1.5 million pounds of ordnance dropped, in some ten thousand sorties, by the forces aboard the Lincoln since late February, when Trump started a war, alongside Israel, to topple the Islamic Republic. Six months later, it’s hard to view the outcome of the conflict as anything other than a profound strategic defeat for the United States. The year had begun with mass anti-government protests in cities across Iran, spurred by the theocratic regime’s mismanagement of the economy, which has also been saddled for years with crippling U.S. sanctions. The protests were brutally quashed by authorities. Then came the bombardments by U.S. and Israeli forces, which assassinated Iran’s octogenarian Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and a number of his cadre; degraded its Air Force and Navy; and struck schools, universities, and health facilities, while killing more than three thousand civilians in the first weeks of the campaign. The surviving regime, in turn, hunkered down and used its asymmetric capabilities to close the crucial Strait of Hormuz, weaponizing the country’s geography in ways it hadn’t done before, in order to exact its own toll on the global economy and heap pressure on Washington. | 
