Iranians Seek a Propaganda Coup, Casting USS Abraham Lincoln’s Rust as Sign of Defeat

United States Ship Abraham Lincoln is at port in Thailand after a record-setting deployment, but civilian observers are focusing on how it looks rather than its crew’s accomplishments. The rusted condition of the aircraft carrier is being held up as signaling America’s defeat — a propaganda coup for Tehran that ignores the realities of combat aboard United States Navy vessels.Negative headlines began emerging on Thursday. “Rusty state” of USS Lincoln “shocks observers,” reported CNN. “The USS Abraham Lincoln is Rusting,” said the Chinese Communist Party’s Global Times. “So is U.S. hegemonic power.” The Times of India reports that “Iran’s alleged ‘Rustsheed’ missile” caused the corrosion. Social media spread the myth.There is, however, nothing sinister about this rust. “On September 12,” the United States Naval Institute News reported last week, USS “Lincoln will have been deployed for 295 days … second only to the deployment of USS Gerald R. Ford that ended in May.” That carrier also rusted during its mission from the North Atlantic to the Caribbean, Mediterranean, and Red Seas. Salt water, as anyone who has lived near the ocean knows, takes a toll on metal. When France gifted America the Statue of Liberty in 1886, she gleamed like a new penny. Exposure to the brackish water of New York Harbor dulled her to brown by the early 1900s. Oxidation, rain, salty sea spray, and airborne sulfur turned it the now-familiar green by 1920. USS Abraham Lincoln departs Thailand’s Laem Chabang Port on September 6, 2026. Thananuwat Srirasant/Getty ImagesNo enemy ever claimed credit for these mundane chemical reactions. Yet Tehran, whose new boasts refute earlier ones about having sunk USS Lincoln, just moves on to the new tall tale without comment. The rust story draws attention away from the 1.5 million pounds of ordinance and over 10,000 sorties the carrier launched at Iranian targets, according to United States Navy data.Contemporary Americans have images of Navy ships from films like “Top Gun.” Past generations were more familiar with the grubby reality of military life, rallying to the flag shoeless at Valley Forge, covered in limestone dust at the Alamo, and drenched in the oily waters of Pearl Harbor. The important thing wasn’t appearance. It was — as the Union stated of the red, white, and blue during the Civil War — that those “colors never run.”Captain John P. Cordle, a 30-year U.S. Navy veteran now retired, and a United States Coast Guard marine engineer, Benjamin Miner, wrote about reforming painting protocols for the U.S. Naval Institute’s website in January. “Navy ship designs often promote rust” they wrote, “from using non-stainless steel fasteners … to routing drainage water down the side of the hull.”The Nimitz-class aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln. U.S. Navy via Wikimedia CommonsCaptain Cordle and Mr. Miner noted that the Navy “places most of the burden of painting on sailors,” but they’re “recruited for technical skills, not to apply paint to steel.” There’s also the reality, lost on civilians, is that aesthetics aren’t a priority in the heat of battle.Major painting is done only in dry dock and port; not on the high seas. The reasons are both practical and legal. Vessels like USS Ford and USS Lincoln may be protected from enemy salvos, but they’re not beyond the reach of EPA regulations and treaties like the International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution from Ships.Uniform National Discharge Standards forbid leaching heavy metals and solvents used for painting into marine waters — even those off an enemy’s coast. “Paint chips and unused paint residues,” the EPA and DOD stated in 2020, “must be collected and disposed of onshore.Hull scraping, sanding, and repainting or “side cleaning” are restricted because coatings shed toxic components. Ships, Navy Decoded reported in December, “can’t pull into port for cosmetic maintenance… They look rough because they’re actually doing a job. The rust is the price of dominating the world’s oceans instead of patrolling your own backyard,” and “ships in the Persian Gulf rust twice as fast as ships in the North Atlantic.”Navy vessels like USS Lincoln aren’t models painted with care or the pristine props of Hollywood productions. They’re platforms to project America’s power and protect its interests across the globe. Iran may want to focus on rusted paintjobs. Yet the only relevant thing in war — as it was from Mobile Bay to Midway — is that Old Glory’s colors never run.

Iranians Seek a Propaganda Coup, Casting USS Abraham Lincoln’s Rust as Sign of Defeat

Iranians Seek a Propaganda Coup, Casting USS Abraham Lincoln’s Rust as Sign of Defeat

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