About that torpedoed Iranian warship

The BBQ Pit
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1

The IRIS Dena

was sunk 2000 miles away from Iran, was not involved in any military actions, and had been involved in an international naval exercise, of which the US had originally been a part. This outs a very different spin on the footage of her sinking.

Reports CNN:

The Iranian frigate was reportedly on its way back home after participating in India’s multilateral MILAN 2026 naval exercises, which included ships from what were described as 18 “friendly foreign countries” and aircraft from three more, including the United States, according to an Indian government website.

…

But MILAN 2026 was a largely ceremonial event, with videos posted on social media showing members of the Dena’s crew marching in a parade in the port of Visakhapatnam two weeks ago.

Reporting on Daily Kos was more brutal:

Nowhere in the AP story is it mentioned that this was a sneak attack carried out during a training exercise organized by the government of India and that the US Navy had been invited but with drew just hours before the attack.

They quote an India news site:

The Iranian ship will not be where it was if we had not invited it to talk part in our Milan exercise.

We were the hosts.

I am told that as per protocol for this exercise ships cannot carry any ammunition. It was defenceless.The Iranian naval personnel had paraded before our president.The attack by the US submarine was premeditated as the US was aware of the Iranian ship’s presence in the exercise to which the US navy was invited but withdrew from participation at the last minute, presumably with this operation in mind.

The US has ignored India’s sensitivities as the ship was in these waters because of India’s invitation.

We are far from politically or militarily responsible for the US attack.

According to CNN, ther was a justification for the unprovoked attack:

Analyst Carl Schuster, a former director of the US Pacific Command’s Joint Intelligence Center and a retired US Navy captain, said that in the current state of conflict between the US and Iran, the Dena presented a threat.

“Given Iran’s continuing attacks on any US-friendly country it can reach, it is very possible, indeed likely, that the frigate was positioned to strike mercantile shipping either flagged to a US-friendly country or carrying cargo for one,” Schuster told CNN.

“This sinking can be justified as a preventive measure reflecting that concern,” he said.

Alessio Patalano, professor of war and strategy at King’s College London, said the US’ legal justification for sinking the ship can be found in a document signed by President Donald Trump on March 2, which, in part, said the US took action against Iran to ensure the free flow of goods and traffic through the Strait of Hormuz.

The Iranian frigate could be seen as a threat to that flow, Patalano said in a post on X.

If I were a third party country (not the US or Iran), I don’t think I’d see it that way.

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These days it’s not just fair but almost essential to assume that in any such event the Trump team will have dishonest and malicious intentions. Seems emerging evidence is bearing this out as usual.

My kingdom for a war-crimes trial.

3

Not to defend her sinking in any way, but what you describe is largely what the historical antipathy toward submarines has been based in. They’re fundamentally sneak attack systems, and at least when they’re used right, they strike without warning.

The issue here isn’t how the submarine was employed; it was, like all the rest of this war, a question of what we were aiming to achieve by doing it? What operational or strategic goals did that support?

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Without commenting on the merit of the war itself, I would assume the strategic goal is to erode Iran’s naval fighting capabilities by destroying their largest ship.

The problem is that the Iranian Navy is so mis-matched compared to the US Navy that using a submarine to blow a frigate out of the water 1000 miles from Iran seems unnecessarily petty and callous (which as it happens are Trump’s defining qualities). The IRIS Dena wasn’t the Bismark. I’m pretty sure the US Navy could locate and capture it at will with a couple Arleigh Burke class destroyers.

Then again, there seem to be some unconfirmed reports that a US Arleigh Burke class destroyer was hit with a missile. So it’s not like Iranian ships are harmless either.

For some reason when they keep saying “first ship to be sunk by a torpedo in 40 years” I’m thinking like WWII U-boats, not 1980s Falkland War.

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There was no reason to take this ship out, it was 2000 miles away from home and the sub could have merely tracked it until a US navel surface ship could challenge it to surrender. That’s what a country with God on its side would have done.

6

I suppose that if I washed to believe the attack on Iran was in any way necessary or legitimate, I could accept an argument justifying this sinking. If we truly are trying to eliminate Iran’s ability to apply force at a distance, disabling this ship certainly qualifies.

But so many factors contribute to make it appear - at best - bad form. Which is pretty much the US’s standard “form” these days.

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This ship was apparently unarmed, so it was harmless.

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Not unarmed, but not carrying ammunition, as the international exercise she’d been participating in required the ships not to carry ammunition.

That changes the whole picture- here we are sinking a ship that we knew was defenseless with a sneak attack. That’s a deliberate move. We could have just as easily rolled a Burke class destroyer up on it and requested they heave to and prepare to be boarded, then taken control of the ship and sailed it wherever we wanted.

In some sense this would have been MORE of an international dick move, in that how would it have looked to see the Dena sailing into some port flying the Stars and Stripes, rather than just blowing up on a thermal periscope view?

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They underthink even their dick moves, everything is instant gratification for these guys.

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They very much give me cocky teenager vibes in terms of what they think is “awesome”. Like I suspect Colin Jost’s parody of Hegseth as a energy-drink swilling jock bully is probably a lot closer to the truth than we all realize.

To them, doing dickish stuff by way of punching down is cool, and the more spectacular, the better, as blowing a ship up is more spectacular than seizing it, and therefore cooler and more humiliating to the Iranians than merely seizing it. The real dick move would be to seize it, not give it back, and then deliberately sink it in a SINKEX in the future, conveying that “No, you can’t have it back, and what’s more, we’re going to sink it ourselves, just because we can.”.

That’s the dominance move here, not merely sinking the ship.

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Very much so.

How fatiguing that this is just a blip in the seemingly endless line of horror committed in just over a year.

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I mean it’s a perfectly reasonable action for a country at war to sink a naval vessel from an opposing nation, even if its a long way from the main battlefield (unlike this :angry: )

Except WE AREN’T AT WAR! The Trump administration is very clear on this point. He did not seek Congress’ authorization to go to war as the constitution said he must. This act is an act of war.

Of course as with so much of this bullshit we let it happen. We allowed other presidents to commit acts of war without authorization from Congress. Of course no president would ever abuse that power and start a major war with a regional power without congressional approval :roll_eyes:

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I hate feeling like we are in WW2 again, except we are the bad guys.

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But that’s so woke and doesn’t let our war secretary cream his shorts.

This is the administration that was threatened by fishermen in motorboats off the coast of Venezuela.

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I agree. Trump has gotten everyone to hate us. And certainly not trust us.

But that’s SOP for Trump, and every other bully.

On a side note, I’m surprised we didn’t accidently sink a NATO ship.

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It has been less than a week – give us a chance!

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Absolutely. This needs to be reported more widely. The subservient press is keeping this information nicely under wraps.

It’s time that Americans learned that they are now the Evil Empire. They blow up schools and kill children. They sink ships with no ammunition on board conducting training exercises with other nations.

I would not be surprised to learn that they machine-gunned the survivors in the water.

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Having just published a book on submarines and submarine warfare (PLUG!) I’m well aware of this – I bring it up in the first chapter. But the problem with the current case is not that the Sub attacked sneakily and without warning. It’s that the US sub attacked a ship that was purportedly known to be unarmed and a huge distance from home or any area of activity. In that way, it seems even more heinous than the sinking of the Lusitania (which was, although it wasn’t publicized at the time, actually carrying armaments). When the Iranian ship sailed to its destination it was tim e of peace and the US was a participant in the same activity. It seem kinda dickish to then sink the ship when you know it’s unsuspecting and disarmed.

PLUG – Mystery Ship: The Long, Strange Odyssey of Submarine S-49. McFarland Press. www.mystery-ship.net

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I made this point in the OP

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I’d go a tad beyond “kinda dickish” and put it into “war crime-ish”