September 06, 2019
An Iranian-American US Navy officer is now the skipper of an aircraft carrier and may find himself patrolling in the Persian Gulf before long.
Capt. Kavon Hakimzadeh took command of the USS Harry S. Truman in July, achieving a goal he set for himself 30 years ago after he first laid eyes on an aircraft carrier in Norfolk, Virginia. Back then, he was a young sailor who had joined the Navy straight out of high school to serve a country he had only lived in for about a decade.
Hakimzadeh was born in Texas to an American mother and an Iranian father. The family moved to Iran when he was still a baby. He fondly remembers his childhood there during the 1970s.
He attended an international school where they spoke Farsi and English, kept the faith of his Southern Baptist mom and had uncles and cousins who lived nearby.
It was, as Hakimzadeh says, an “idyllic” childhood. But that changed in 1979.
He and his family fled to America when he was 11, his sister was 9 and his mother was seven-months pregnant. They were rushed onto an airplane as the airport was about to close, destined for a small town near Hattiesburg, Mississippi, where the son of one of his father’s business partners had agreed to take them in.
“It just happened to be a country in chaos, a country in revolution. And so, as an 11-year-old, it was a little traumatic to have life as you know it completely change like that,” Hakimzadeh said. “I think it is probably a lot to do with why I decided I wanted to serve and wanted to be in this line of work.”
Hakimzadeh enlisted in the Navy out of high school.
“Coming from the experiences we dealt with as a family,… they’ve seen the alternative,” he said. “They strongly support what I do.”
Hakimzadeh is now preparing for the possibility that he could be called to return to the Middle East. He has already served multiple tours of duty with the Central Command previously. His carrier strike group has already completed its last major pre-deployment exercise.
While the Navy doesn’t disclose where its ships will go or when, aircraft carriers are frequently assigned to the Central Command for six-months of duty in the northern Indian Ocean and waters of the Red Sea and Persian Gulf. The aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln is currently in the region.
If the Truman is called to take the Lincoln’s place in the region, Hakimzadeh told The Virginian-Pilot of Norfolk, Virginia—the Truman’s home-port—that he and his crew are prepared.
“There’s not some particular personal angst involved,” he said. “I’ve deployed there multiple times in the past.”
Hakimzadeh, whose call sign is “Hak,” spent much of his career as an E-2 Hawkeye flight officer based in Norfolk. He’s flown in combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan and has completed eight operational deployments on seven different ships.
Hakimzadeh says he still speaks a little Farsi and is always happy to tell his family’s story to those who want to know more.
“I love to tell people that it’s a testament to our merit-based Navy that a kid at 19, 20 years old can look at these things and go, ‘You know what? I want to command those one day.’ And it’s certainly a testament to the United States of America that a guy named Kavon Hakimzadeh can do that.”
Navy captains who are chosen to command aircraft carriers have an extremely high likelihood of being promoted to admiral.