Warrior ethos? U.S. sank Iranian naval ship off Sri Lanka, knowing it was unarmed

Warrior ethos? U.S. sank Iranian naval ship off Sri Lanka, knowing it was unarmed

The New Republic reports:

The U.S. Navy’s attack on an Iranian frigate, the IRIS Dena, on Wednesday was the first time an American submarine has sunk an enemy ship since World War II. But the Dena may not have been armed because it was returning from an international exercise in the Indian Ocean, and the U.S. Navy likely knew it because it was taking part in the same exercise.

Both the United States and Iran were taking part in the MILAN 2026 exercise, organized by the Indian Navy, on February 15–26, with the U.S. sending a maritime patrol aircraft and Iran sending the Dena. Iranian sailors from the ship paraded on land before India’s president.


The exercise in question required ships not to carry any ammunition. Normally, the Dena carries various missiles and guns, including anti-ship missiles. Because the U.S. also took part, it would have been aware that the Dena was unarmed. Former Indian Foreign Minister Kanwal Sibal accused the attack of being “premeditated as the US was aware of the Iranian ship’s presence in the exercise.”

“The US has ignored India’s sensitivities as the ship was in these waters because of India’s invitation,” Sibal said in a post on X. The Iranian ambassador to India, Mohammad Fathali, condemned the attack and said the ship was unarmed.

“We will respond to this assassination very strongly. This ship was unarmed and in a regular maneuver at sea. I think that the United States and the Zionist regime want to disturb and destroy all the international law and international norms,” Fathali said. [Continue reading…]

HuffPost reports:

“There is an affirmative duty to rescue under the Geneva Conventions,” said Mark Nevitt, a former Navy lawyer in the judge advocate general corps and now a law professor at Emory University.

He and other legal experts warn that disregarding those and other rules invites mistreatment, even death, to Americans who are shipwrecked or captured.

The Geneva Conventions, the 1949 agreements governing international armed conflict, state that, following a naval engagement, “parties to the conflict shall, without delay, take all possible measures to search for and collect the shipwrecked, wounded and sick, to protect them against pillage and ill-treatment, to ensure their adequate care, and to search for the dead and prevent their being despoiled.”

After sinking the Dena, though, the attacking submarine appears to have done none of those and instead left it to Sri Lankan authorities to find survivors and collect the bodies of those killed.

Laurie Blank, also an international law professor at Emory, said the rule applies to submarines, as well, and if the sub did not have the ability or room to care for the shipwrecked sailors, the crew still had the obligation to do what it could to save their lives. [Continue reading…]

Print this post
Comments are closed.