Does a viral clip prove that Iran sank the American aircraft carrier "Abraham Lincoln" involved in the military operation in the region? No, that's not true: The U.S. military denied the rumors twice. No credible media organizations reported the purported news.
The claim appeared in a post (archived here) published on X on March 1, 2026. It opened:
JUST IN🇺🇸❌🇮🇷🔥 Iranian missiles have sunk USS Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier in the Persian Gulf.
This is what the video looked like online at the time of writing:
(Image source: Screenshot of post at X.)
The earliest example of the claim (archived here and here) found by Lead Stories was published on TikTok. According to the Bellingcat time stamp extraction tool, it was posted on Feb. 28, 2026. That variation contained an uncropped version of the clip with red bands above and below the supposed footage. Across the video, we saw Arabic text:
الحدث عاجلإيران تقصف حاملة الطائرات الذمريكية في البحر ادحمر
As translated by Google Translate, it reads in English:
Breaking news: Iran bombs US aircraft carrier in the Red Sea.
At the last seconds of that video, a watermark with another account's name appeared in the bottom-right corner. It read: @wibigwlugo3. That account (archived here), however, contained zero publicly available entries, as of this writing.
Earlier, on March 1, 2026, Lead Stories debunked another similar claim about the purported fire on the U.S.S. "Abraham Lincoln".
On that day, the U.S. Central Command posted (archived here) a statement on X, denying that the aircraft carrier was struck by any Iranian missiles:
🚫Iran's IRGC claims to have struck USS Abraham Lincoln with ballistic missiles. LIE.
✅The Lincoln was not hit. The missiles launched didn't even come close. 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 U.S. Central Command also posted a Feb. 28, 2026, photo (archived here) and a March 1, 2026, video (archived here) of the aircraft carrier. They didn't show the extensive damage that the viral clip purportedly showed.
On March 2, 2026, the U.S. Central Command published one more statement (archived here). It read:
🚫The Iranian regime's false messaging machine continues to falsely claim that it has sunk a U.S. aircraft carrier.
✅The TRUTH: The only carrier that has been hit is the Shahid Bagheri, an Iranian drone carrier. U.S. forces struck the ship within hours of launching Operation Epic Fury.
A search across recent articles on Google News (archived here) did not show credible reports confirming the claim.
The video reviewed in this fact check contained several hints suggesting that it may not be showing what the posts claimed it did.
For example, what initially appears to be a group of planes on the ship deck when seen from afar later changes its outlook to some unrecognizable mass with fused wings:
(Image source: Screenshots of post at X.)
The video's low, blurry quality appeared to be a deliberate attempt to disguise its origins. Lead Stories could not entirely rule out AI use in this case, but the video's appearance was consistent with a technique seen repeatedly in propaganda campaigns: the reuse of Arma 3 game clips. The video game's blog (archived here) explains that even though the original script takes users to "a futuristic fictional conflict in 2035", the game can be customized, and people can generate "whole new terrains, ground vehicles, aircraft, weapons, uniforms, equipment, and scenarios" to the point that "Arma 3 can recreate and simulate any historic, present, or future conflict in great detail." Yet, such clips would not be entirely identical to the real footage from war zones. As the Arma's blog points out, when used to mislead people on social media, those videos are intentionally downgraded in quality to conceal the details that give away that it's a video game.
The U.S. and Israel struck Iran on Feb. 28, 2026 (archived here), killing Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who had ruled the country for 37 years.
The crew of U.S.S. "Abraham Lincoln" (archived here) consists of at least 3,000 people (archived here). Had it been sunk or extensively damaged, the chances are that such an event would cause multiple fatalities.
By the end of the third day of the war, six U.S. servicemembers (archived here) lost their lives in the conflict.
