Flashpoints | Security | South Asia

Is India Torpedoing Its Claims to Being a Net Security Provider in the IOR?

The U.S. sank an Iranian warship, which was returning home from an India-hosted exercise, off the Sri Lankan coast yesterday. India’s silence in response is deafening.

Sailors aboard the IRIS Dena during the welcome ceremony for the Iranian warship on its arrival at Visakhapatnam, India, to participate in an International Fleet Review and MILAN multilateral naval exercise, February 17, 2026.

The escalating war in West Asia entered India’s neighborhood this week, when an American submarine torpedoed and sank an Iranian warship in international waters off the Sri Lankan coast in the early hours of March 4. The attack came five days after the U.S. and Israel initiated their war on Iran.

The war’s spread to India’s southern doorstep — the Iranian vessel was torpedoed just 40 nautical miles from Sri Lanka’s coast — has evoked concern in India’s security establishment.

Former Indian Navy chief Admiral Arun Prakash said in an interview that the sinking of the Iranian ship by a torpedo “means that a U.S. Navy nuclear submarine or SSN has been lurking” in waters close to India for “many days.”

The United States “has brought maritime warfare to our doorstep, without informing us or taking us into confidence,” he pointed out.

Meanwhile, a second Iranian warship is said to be near the Sri Lankan coast, inside Sri Lanka’s exclusive economic zone but outside its maritime boundary. Will it meet a similar fate?

The situation is concerning. “Should the Americans strike another Iranian ship in the region, the situation could escalate dangerously,” a former Indian Naval official told The Diplomat. Iran has also warned the U.S. of retaliation.

IRIS Dena, a Moudge-class frigate belonging to the Southern Fleet of the Iranian Navy, was sailing home from India, after participating in an International Fleet Review and MILAN multilateral naval exercise in Visakhapatnam on India’s eastern coast just a few days earlier.

The Iranian ship “thought it was safe in international waters,” but “instead, it was sunk by a torpedo,” U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said at a Pentagon briefing. It was the “first sinking of an enemy ship by a torpedo since the Second World War,” he said, and went on to claim that “America is winning, decisively, devastatingly and without mercy.”

In a statement on X posted a day after the incident, Iranian Foreign Minister Seyed Abbas Araghchi said: “The U.S. has perpetrated an atrocity at sea, 2,000 miles away from Iran’s shores. Frigate Dena, a guest of India’s Navy carrying almost 130 sailors, was struck in international waters without warning. Mark my words: The U.S. will come to bitterly regret the precedent it has set.”

IRIS Dena was carrying around 180 crew members on board and issued a distress call at around 5.08 a.m. local time on March 4, while sailing about 40 nautical miles........

© The Diplomat