Going by the v1.0 timeline, even if the first war against Iraq didn't happen, the Iowas might still have been around by the time the Twilight War began in '96. Since in the v1.0 timeline, the Cold War never ended, the USN had reason to keep the Iowas around. Perhaps they were no longer on active duty c.'96, but I would fathom that they would still have been on the books and could have been returned to service relatively quickly. They may not have been the most practical vessels in the modern world, but they had their uses and a certain prestige value as well. All my old Cold War naval warfare books from the '80s like to compare the Iowas and the Kirovs. It's apples to oranges, of course, but I think the USN liked to dispute the claim to having the largest, most powerful surface warfare vessels afloat. In my T2KU, all of the Iowas were in active service at some point during the Twilight War.
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