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https://theduran.com/allegedly-iran-today-eliminated-5000-u-s-sailors-and-one-13b

Allegedly Iran today eliminated 5,000 U.S. sailors and one $13B Aircraft Carrier.

15 March 2026, posted by Eric Zuesse. (All of my recent articles can be seen here.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2Wggpu3hXvU

“Iran Sinks USS Gerald Ford — America's $13 Billion Carrier Is Gone”

15 March 2026, Blackbox Money and Collapse Codex

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13 billion. That is the number the United States Navy will never get back.

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Not the steel, not the flight deck, not the 4.5 acres of sovereign American territory that the USS Gerald R. Ford represented every time it sailed into a

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body of water and every government within 1,000 m understood immediately and without explanation what American military power looked like when it chose

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to make itself visible. The USS Gerald R. Ford is on the floor of the Persian Gulf, the most expensive warship ever constructed in the history of human

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civilization. The most technologically advanced aircraft carrier ever built by any nation. The centerpiece of America's entire naval power projection doctrine.

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The ship that was supposed to represent the next generation of American naval dominance. The answer to every question about whether American sea power could be challenged, threatened, or defeated

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in the modern era. Iran answered that question this morning. And the answer is on the seafloor 60 m below the surface in water that used to be the operational

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theater of the most powerful naval force in the history of the world. in water that is now a graveyard for the assumption that American aircraft

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carriers are unchallengeable. A crew of 5,000 American sailors was aboard that ship. 5,000. The Pentagon has not

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released casualty figures. The Pentagon has not released survivor counts. The Pentagon has issued a statement confirming the loss of a naval vessel in the Persian Gulf and promising further information as the situation develops.

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That statement carefully constructed to communicate the minimum necessary while the people writing it calculate how to manage what comes next is the most

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catastrophic single sentence any American military spokesperson has issued since December 7th, 1941. Stay with me for the next 14 minutes because

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what happened this morning in the Persian Gulf is not a military event with military consequences. Before we continue, a quick note. Many of the

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events we cover on this channel follow recurring patterns. economic stress,

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geopolitical escalation, and systemic shocks. While researching these patterns, I created a detailed report called the Global Crisis Survival Guide,

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where I break down the warning signals that often appear before major global disruptions and practical strategies for navigating them. If you're interested in

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reading the full report, you'll find it linked in the description below. Now,

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let's continue with today's analysis. It is a civilizational event with consequences that reach into every economy, every government, every strategic calculation, and every

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household on Earth that runs on the assumption that American power means something permanent and unchallengeable.

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That assumption just went to the bottom of the Persian Gulf. And the world that existed before this morning is not the world that exists now. The USS Gerald R.

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Ford was commissioned on July 22nd,

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2017. It took 12 years to build. It cost $13.3 billion. Its flight deck covers 4.5 acres. Its hull is 106 ft long,

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longer than the Empire State Building is tall. It carries 75 aircraft. Its electromagnetic launch system can accelerate a fully loaded F-35 from zero

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to flying speed in 300 ft. It generates 600 megawatts of electrical power from two nuclear reactors, enough to power a

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city of 500,000 people. Its radar systems can track objects the size of a baseball at a distance of 200 miles. Its defensive weapon suite was designed

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specifically to defeat the most advanced anti-hship missile systems any adversary was known to possess. 5,000 American sailors called it home. A carrier strike

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group surrounds it at all times. Two Arley Burke class destroyers running Aegis air defense. A Tyonderoga class cruiser coordinating the strike group's

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combined weapon systems. Two attack submarines running subsurface protection beneath the group. Supply ships electronic warfare aircraft overhead. A

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layered defensive architecture with 11 separate systems between an incoming missile and the carrier at the center.

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11 layers of defense. Iran went through all of them. The strike package Iran deployed this morning was not improvised. It was not opportunistic. It

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was the execution of a targeting solution that Iran's military planners have spent years building, testing, and refining against exactly the defensive

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architecture that surrounded the USS Gerald R. Ford in the Persian Gulf this morning. Hypersonic missiles from three separate vectors arriving within 8

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seconds of each other. inside every engagement reset window of every defensive system in the strike group simultaneously. Ballistic anti-hship

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missiles launched from Iranian territory providing top attack trajectories that the strike group's defensive systems are least optimized to handle. And cruise

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missiles flying at sekming altitude beneath the radar horizon of the destroyers meant to detect them until they were close enough that detection and intercept had collapsed into the

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same impossible moment. Three vectors 8 seconds apart, 11 defensive layers. None of it was enough. There are 11 aircraft

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carriers in the United States Navy. The Ford class, the class the USS Gerald R.

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Ford represents, is the newest generation. Two others of the same class are either in service or in advanced construction. The remaining eight are

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Nimits class carriers. Older, still capable, but operating technology designed in the 1970s, updated continuously rather than replaced

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fundamentally. Building a replacement for the USS Gerald R. Ford takes 12 years and 13 $3 billion under ideal

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conditions. These are not ideal conditions. The American Defense Industrial Base is operating under supply chain constraints that have extended production timelines across

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every major weapons program. The skilled workforce that builds nuclearpowered aircraft carriers is concentrated in a single facility. Newport News ship

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building in Virginia that has a finite capacity to accelerate production regardless of budget allocation. The United States Navy cannot replace what

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it lost this morning on any timeline that is relevant to this conflict. That is not a political statement. It is a production arithmetic statement. What the loss of one carrier means for American naval power in practical terms.

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The carrier strike group model that American naval doctrine is built around requires a minimum of three carrier groups to maintain continuous global

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presence. One deployed, one in workup preparing to deploy, one in maintenance,

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recovering from deployment. 11 carriers running that rotation produce a coverage pattern that American commanders have managed for 40 years. 10 carriers

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running that rotation create gaps. Gaps in coverage mean theaters where American carrier power is not present when something happens that requires it. The

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Persian Gulf is now one of those theaters. An American carrier group just demonstrated that the Persian Gulf is a place where American carriers can be sunk. The decision to send another one

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into that same body of water against an adversary that just proved it can defeat an 11 layer carrier strike group defense with a coordinated multi-vector strike

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is not a military decision. It is a political decision. And the politics of that decision against the backdrop of 5,000 sailors aboard a ship currently

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sitting on the seafloor is a decision that every member of Congress, every American voter, and every ally watching this unfold will have a strong opinion

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about. Iran just made the Persian Gulf a place where American carriers do not go.

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That is not a temporary tactical adjustment. That is a permanent strategic reality that reshapes the entire regional military balance starting today. A carrier on the floor

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of the Persian Gulf produces consequences that reach every economy on Earth through three simultaneous channels and all three channels are active right now. The first channel is

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oil. 20% of global daily oil supply transits the Persian Gulf. That number was already under pressure from straight of Hormuz disruptions, mine laying

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operations, and the destruction of the underwater drone network that was tracking them. The loss of the carrier strike group that was providing surface cover for what remained of Gulf Transit

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removes the last meaningful deterrent to Iranian interdiction of commercial shipping in the Gulf. Every tanker captain, every shipping company, every insurance underwriter doing risk

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assessment for Gulf Transit received the same update this morning. The American naval asset that was supposed to protect them is on the seafloor. Oil is going to

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move in one direction, the direction it was already moving before this morning,

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but faster and without a ceiling. The second channel is financial markets.

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American carrier groups are not just military assets. They are confidence infrastructure. The assumption that American carriers are present,

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operational, and capable underwrites a significant portion of the risk assessment that global financial markets apply to geopolitical events. When that

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assumption held, markets priced political risk in the Gulf at levels that reflected the belief that American power would ultimately stabilize the situation. That assumption is gone this

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morning. The repricing of geopolitical risk across every market that touches energy, shipping, and global supply chains is happening in real time as

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analysts process what the presence of a 13 billion dollar carrier on the seafloor means. For the confidence architecture, global finance has built

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around American military power. The third channel is every supply chain that runs through or depends on the Persian Gulf corridor. Electronics manufactured

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in South Korea and Japan. Automobiles assembled in Germany with components from across Asia. food staples transported in refrigerated containers

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by shipping companies whose insurance costs just became non-viable. Every product that touches the global supply chain at any point in its production

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touches energy somewhere in that production. Energy just became materially more expensive and materially less reliable simultaneously. That

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combination produces inflation at a speed and scale that central banks cannot manage through conventional tools because the root cause is physical

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scarcity, not monetary policy. A family in Manila paying more for cooking gas this week because a carrier went down in the Persian Gulf this morning is not an

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abstraction. That family exists. That price increase is coming. The connection is real and runs through a chain of commodity pricing and supply chain

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economics that links every household on Earth to a seafloor 60 m beneath the Persian Gulf's surface. Here is what the official American position is, and here

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is the architecture of what it leaves out. The Pentagon confirmed the loss.

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six words in the opening line of a statement that took four hours to issue after the ship went down. Four hours during which American officials confirmed an incident involving a naval

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asset while the world watched satellite imagery and naval monitoring feeds process what had happened. And the Pentagon calculated the minimum confirmable content of a statement whose

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full implications they are still working to contain. The statement described the attack as an unprecedented act of aggression. It confirmed retaliatory

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operations were being conducted. It promised full accountability. It said nothing about casualties. It said nothing about the specific weapon

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systems Iran used. It said nothing about how a strike package penetrated an 11 layer carrier strike group defense. It said nothing about what the loss of

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carrier coverage in the Persian Gulf means for every other American naval asset operating in a theater where Iran just demonstrated it can sink the most

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heavily defended ship in the history of naval warfare. What the statement most carefully did not say whether American doctrine for carrier deployment in

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contested waters needs to be reconsidered given that the doctrine just produced a $13 billion ship on the seafloor. That question has one answer.

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The answer is yes. The doctrine assumed that the layered defensive architecture of a carrier strike group was sufficient to defeat the most advanced anti-hship

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systems any adversary possessed. That assumption was tested this morning. It failed. doctrine built on a failed assumption is not doctrine. It is a plan

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for producing more carriers on more seafloors.

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The second absence from official communications is the most alarming. The strike that sank the USS Gerald R. Ford used a targeting solution precise enough

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to coordinate three separate weapon types from three separate vectors with an 8-second arrival window. That level of coordination requires real-time positional data on the carrier's exact

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location, heading, speed, and defensive system status updated to within minutes of the strike. Carrier groups do not broadcast that information. They move

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continuously in patterns designed to reduce predictability. Iran had that data, current, precise, sufficient to build a three vector strike time to

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8second intervals. Where that data came from, whether from satellite systems,

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from human intelligence aboard supporting vessels, from signals intelligence penetrating carrier group communications, from underwater assets that tracked the group's movement, is

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the most important unanswered question of this entire conflict. Because whatever the answer is, that source is still operational, still feeding Iran,

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targeting data on American assets that are still floating. The carrier is gone.

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The intelligence capability that sank it is not. Russia released a formal statement within 3 hours of the Pentagon confirmation, not from the foreign

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ministry, from the defense ministry. The distinction matters. Foreign Ministry statements are diplomatic. Defense ministry statements are professional

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military assessments delivered through official channels. Russia's defense ministry described the strike as the most significant demonstration of anti-arrier warfare capability in the

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postcold war era and noted that the coordinated multi-vector approach represented a tactical evolution beyond what American carrier defense architecture was designed to defeat.

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Russia has been developing anti-arrier warfare doctrine for 30 years. Russia's entire naval strategy in the Atlantic and Pacific is premised on the ability

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to deny American carrier groups operational freedom in contested waters near Russian territory. Russia watched Iran execute the concept that Russia has

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been developing against its own threat environment and Russia's defense ministry responded the way a professional institution responds when a theoretical capability is proven

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empirically with documentation with analysis and with the implicit message to every naval power watching. The aircraft carrier's era of

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unchallengeable dominance ended this morning in the Persian Gulf. China's response was the most consequential of any reaction anywhere. Beijing issued no

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public statement for 6 hours. Then China's State News Agency published a single paragraph noting the incident without analysis or commentary. In those

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same six hours, Chinese Naval Command issued updated operational protocols across the South China Sea Fleet. Those protocols revised threat assessment

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frameworks for American carrier group operations in shallow contested water environments. Two carrier groups currently operate in the Western Pacific as part of American commitments to

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Taiwan security. Both groups received updated intelligence assessments from Pacific Command, reflecting the changed threat picture. The conversations

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happening between Taipei and Washington today about what the loss of the Ford means for American carrierbased security guarantees to Taiwan are conversations

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that will shape the Taiwan Strait equation for the next decade. The Gulf States are in a category of crisis no external description can fully capture.

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Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia. Every government that built its security architecture around American carrier

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presence in the Gulf is this morning operating without that architecture for the first time in 40 years. The carriers that were the visible, unambiguous

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demonstration that American power stood between them and whatever Iran chose to do, one of those carriers is gone. And every leader in every Gulf capital is

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asking Washington the same question in different language. If Iran can sink the Ford, what is left that Iran cannot reach. Washington does not have an

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answer that helps them. Here is what the world looks like this morning that it did not look like yesterday. It looks like a world where aircraft carriers can be sunk. Not theoretically. Not in war

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games and simulations and classified assessments that planners read and file and hope never become real. actually on a specific morning in specific water

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with a specific $13 billion ship and a specific 5,000 person crew producing a specific wreck on a specific seafloor that every satellite in orbit can locate and every government on Earth can see.

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The carriers still floating are still capable. They still carry 75 aircraft each. They still project enormous power across every ocean they sail. They are

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still the most significant conventional military assets any nation operates anywhere on Earth. But they are no longer unchallengeable. And unchallengeable was the word that made

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them do what they did without firing a shot. Unchallengeable was the word that kept adversaries from trying.

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Unchallengeable was the strategic concept that 80 years of American naval dominance was built on and that American foreign policy, American alliance

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commitments, and American deterrence doctrine were premised on across every theater and every contingency. That word is on the floor of the Persian Gulf in

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60 m of water alongside 13.3 billion and 1,16 ft of steel and the aircraft and

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the reactors and the electromagnetic launch systems and the radar arrays and everything else that made the USS Gerald R. Ford the most expensive military

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asset any country has ever built. And in the silence where that ship used to be,

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in the operational gap where carrier cover used to make Gulf waters feel like American waters, Iran is already calculating what comes next in a theater

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where the most powerful navy in human history just learned something it cannot unlearn. Power is not permanent.

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Dominance is not a law of nature. And $13 billion dollars does not make a ship unsinkable. It makes the wreck more expensive. The Ford is gone. The world it belonged to went with it.

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse’s latest book, AMERICA’S EMPIRE OF EVIL: Hitler’s Posthumous Victory, and Why the Social Sciences Need to Change, is about how America took over the world after World War II in order to enslave it to U.S.-and-allied billionaires. Their cartels extract the world’s wealth by control of not only their ‘news’ media but the social ‘sciences’ — duping the public.