Pentagon chief visits carrier returning from tough Iran war deployment

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth hails the USS Abraham Lincoln’s crew while visiting the ship as it returned from a lengthy, difficult Iran war deployment in which multiple service members in the carrier strike group reportedly attempted suicide.

The massive nuclear-powered warship left California in November 2025 for duty in the South China Sea and was rerouted to the Middle East before US-Israeli attacks on Iran that began in late February, staying at sea until a Thailand port call in early September.

“What the USS Abraham Lincoln carrier strike group did, no other carrier strike group has ever done,” Hegseth says in remarks to service members on the ship while it was at sea in the Pacific.

“Ten thousand sorties, 23,000 combat flight hours, almost 4,000 combat sorties,” he says, later announcing the award of a presidential unit citation to the strike group for “extraordinary heroism against enemy forces.”

Hegseth takes aim at press coverage of the carrier, claiming: “There were a few folks in the media who tried to turn the USS Abraham Lincoln into some sort of a symbol — a symbol of dysfunction, or a symbol of low morale, or a symbol of a failed mission.”

“It’s the exact opposite,” he says. “The only reaction the American people and the American media should have is pride.”