Esra Tekin
16 August 2026•Update: 16 August 2026
The commander of the US Central Command (CENTCOM) finished his 10-day trip to the Middle East on Saturday.
During the trip, Adm. Brad Cooper visited six countries and the US Navy aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln in the Arabian Sea, CENTCOM said on US social media platform X.
Cooper met with military leaders and officials in Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.
He also met with deployed US service members, who are among the more than 50,000 US service members operating across the Middle East.
Cooper thanked the service members aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln "for their tremendous dedication and courage" during his second visit to the carrier.
"The Lincoln Carrier Strike Group is a strong team of high-achieving Americans standing tall with immense, justified pride in everything they accomplished," he said.
"History will record this deployment as one of the most operationally intense and consequential of the modern era," Cooper added.
He had visited the carrier in February along with US special envoy Steve Witkoff and President Donald Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner.
The aircraft carrier, based in San Diego, left for deployment in November and arrived in the Middle East in January.
