During a NATO summit meeting in Ankara with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, U.S. President Donald Trump stated that “the Islamic Republic of Japan” had fired 111 missiles at the American aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln over the course of an hour and that those missiles were intercepted. The remark conflated Japan—a long-standing U.S. security partner—with Iran, an adversarial state that the U.S. Navy has stationed significant naval assets around, including two aircraft carriers and numerous support vessels. The gaffe drew attention because it misidentified a key ally at a high-level diplomatic gathering, though Trump did not elaborate on what prompted the comment.