Usually, I can argue with anyone about most anything, but I am clueless on
carrier stuff.

Yep, you're clueless, sorry but I'm not trying to be rude, but you really
don't know anything about carrier ops.

Anyway, this clip DOES show a carrier from an altitude of about 1000 feet.
The problem is that it looks to me like this is some kind of mucked-up
video taken at the time the carrier is getting prepared for some kind of
demonstration. She is decked out with all her toys topside.

If a carrier is anywhere near an active mission location, I seriously
doubt that they'd be airing out the whole ship.

Not airing out anything, just standard load aboard. There isn't enough room
below in the hangar to store all of the aircraft. This looks like every
carrier I ever sailed on between flight operations.

Besides, I think that the defense system would have picked up on a UAV.
Hell, does Iran even have any UAVs of note?

The defensive systems probably did track the UAV, if that's what it was. If
the ship was tracked by Iranians, it was probably in the Straits of Hormuz
and the Iranians could very easily have been flying it inside their airspace
so the ship would not have done anything to provoke an international
incident over a video from a UAV. If you look closely there is and E-2
Hawkeye on the Starboard bow cat and F/A 18s on the waist in case they need
a rapid launch.

This very easily could be a real Iranian UAV video, but there's nothing
unusual about the condition of the ship or it's airwing.

Rob