The US Central Command has denied Iran’s claim of hitting the USS Abraham Lincoln with four ballistic missiles in the Gulf, stating that the Lincoln was not hit and the missiles didn’t even come close.
“The Lincoln was not hit. The missiles launched didn’t even come close,” Central Command said in a post on X.
“The Lincoln continues to launch aircraft in support of CENTCOM’s relentless campaign to defend the American people by eliminating threats from the Iranian regime.”
The denial comes after Iran’s Revolutionary Guards claimed to have struck the US aircraft carrier in retaliation for US-Israeli strikes that killed Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.
“The US aircraft carrier Abraham Lincoln was struck by four ballistic missiles,” the Guards said in a statement carried by local media, warning that the “the land and sea will increasingly become the graveyard of the terrorist aggressors.”
The USS Abraham Lincoln is one of America’s nuclear-powered aircraft carriers, which the Navy calls “the largest warship in the world.” In a statement, the Pentagon denied it had been hit.
It makes up the ten nuclear-powered aircraft carriers in the US, known as the Nimitz-class.
Nimitz-class carriers are 333 metres long, can move approximately 100,000 tons of equipment, including 65 aircraft and multiple missile mounts, according to the US Navy.
The USS Abraham Lincoln was sent to the Gulf towards the end of January as part of what President Donald Trump called an “armada” which was moved to the region “just in case” as tensions spiked over Iran’s crackdown on protesters angry about the country’s economy
