IRIS Jon Frum

 So I'm wikiwandering around the world and wind up in Bandar Abbas, which apparently means "Port of Abbas". Abbas was the Safavid Shah who, with English help*, took the port city of Comorão from the Portuguese (who had themselves taken it from the Persians a hundred years earlier**) and promptly named it after himself.

These days the city's port serves as a major base for the Islamic Republic of Iran Navy, having, as it does, a commanding position on the Strait of Hormuz.

The harbor facilities are very noticeable from the Googlesat, with what looks to be a standard cargo and passenger harbor at twelve o'clock and the IRIN facility branching off to the right, there, and... hello, what's that?

That sure looks like a carrier down there by the lower left breakwater, only the Iranians don't have a carrier...

"Googlesat, zoom and enhance."

Oh my lawlz. The Iranians have been busying themselves refurbing their Cargo Cult Target Carrier, last seen being sunk in a propaganda short.

#Iran destroys #US carrier mock-up at start of three day 'Great Prophet 9' naval exercise http://t.co/VdmEtBLopL pic.twitter.com/s5O9dnVzPM

— Joseph Dempsey (@JosephHDempsey) February 25, 2015

*I went looking for details on this in the history of the Royal Navy and came up empty handed. The reason being that while the help offered to Abbas was indeed English, it wasn't from the government, but rather from Ye Olde Dynecorpe equivalent, the British East India Company, which had its own army and navy.

**When the Portuguese captured it, Europeans knew it as Bamdel Gombruc, a corruption of "customs house port". This is probably yet another incidence of a foreigner standing in the middle of the harbor and asking a local "What is this place?" while gesturing around him, with the local thinking "Duh. You're in the port. Where do you think you are?"