Overview
- External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar told Parliament that Iran requested on February 28 to dock three ships and India approved on March 1, with IRIS Lavan arriving in Kochi on March 4 and its crew housed at Indian naval facilities.
- Sri Lanka rescued 32 survivors and recovered 87 bodies from the sunken IRIS Dena, then escorted IRIS Bushehr to Trincomalee and moved its crew to naval accommodation after the vessel reported engine trouble.
- Washington and Tehran remain at odds over whether IRIS Dena was armed when it was torpedoed on March 4, with U.S. Indo-Pacific Command calling Iran’s claim of an unarmed ship false and Iranian officials insisting it was in a noncombat role after Indian-hosted drills.
- Colombo is applying different legal regimes to the two groups of Iranian personnel, citing humanitarian law for Dena’s survivors and Hague rules on neutral powers that could require internment of the Bushehr crew until hostilities cease.
- A U.S. diplomatic cable reported by Reuters urged Sri Lanka not to repatriate the Dena survivors or the Bushehr crew to limit Iranian propaganda use, while India has framed its assistance to Lavan as a humanitarian decision.