Getting the carriers out of the line of fire

Here at New Wars, we often mock the hysterical blogosphere's ongoing countdown for a US strike on Iran. Here's Bill Roggio at Worldwide Standard on the same subject:

As noted in July 2007 here, the movement of carriers into the
Persian Gulf is merely a "message." Iran should actually start to worry
when there are no aircraft carriers in the Gulf, as the U.S. would seek to
minimize exposure of its $9 billion capital ships during any conflict with Iran.
The fact is that if the United States wanted to strike at Iranian terror
camps in Khuzestan, it could do so without parking carriers in the gulf. The
U.S. Navy has a wide array of submarines and cruisers equipped to launch
Tomahawk missiles, while U.S. Air Force bombers can strike Iran from bases
inside the US.

This is rich, and echoes what we often contend: that in a full scale blowup, the carriers would have to flee for the safety of a nearby port. In a real shooting war at sea, imagined what happened during a submarine missile strike on the Somali terrorist camp last week, but on a far grander scale involving scores of warships and hundreds or thousands of missiles.