Somewhere between the sinking of a ship and the scramble to assign blame, India found itself in a conversation it never asked to be part of.

On March 4, 2026, the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena was torpedoed and sunk by an American submarine off the southern coast of Sri Lanka. Eighty-seven people died. It was a tragedy by any measure and it was also, without ambiguity, an act of war between the United States and Iran, a conflict that has been building for years and has nothing to do with New Delhi.

What followed, however, was telling. Within days, attention turned however obliquely toward India. The reason? IRIS Dena had participated in the MILAN naval exercise hosted by India at Visakhapatnam just weeks earlier. 

It is worth being precise about the timeline. The sea phase of MILAN concluded on February 24. IRIS Dena departed Indian shores the following day, called at Hambantota in Sri........

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