Wouldn’t it make sense for the ship’s captain to negotiate a surrender to US forces?
AFAIK They haven’t made any hostile acts against the US military. The seamen aren’t criminals.
It’s a military support ship. The seaman are enemy combatants. You don’t wait for them to attack first. The ship’s captain is under orders and it makes significantly more sense to seek shelter and wait it out than to surrender. There us valuable intelligence information aboard.
I agree the Iranian ship is a legitimate military target.
The Captain only has two choices, surrender or dock in a Sri Lankan port under the pretext of needing repairs.
Will Sri Lanka get involved and offer the ship protection?
I wouldn’t think getting hit by US torpedos is a viable 3rd option. 
Third choice is to get all crew off and scuttle the ship.
Being sunk is pretty much the worse option.
Would the US even bother to respond? It’s probably widely known in the seafaring community that the US has developed a habit of just sinking ships and killing the survivors. I doubt they’d expect to survive a surrender attempt to Americans.
Is it? Capture is probably worse for a naval officer. Go down with the ship, right?
Dated and that was generally only the Captain. The Captain should get their crew to safety in a no win situation. Think Germans and Scapa Flow.
And I probably should extract this conversation to a new thread. Done
No idea what the Navy will do if an enemy Navy or Navy Support Vessel surrenders, hopefully return to accepting surrender. Those Boats Strikes are a dark stain on the long and generally honorable tradition of the US Navy.
It should also be noted that in regards to the issue at hand, it’s less a matter of “what would the Navy actually do” than it is “what would an Iranian captain think the American Navy might do?” And I doubt they feel very trusting in our willingness to refrain from war crimes at the moment.
Are Iranian ship captains even allowed to surrender their ship to foreign powers and, if not, would the crew even follow what they determine to be an unlawful order to do so?
I don’t think anyone would know that for sure outside of the Iranian Government and senior Navy Officers, but that would also be illegal and criminal.
Once he’s done so, what’s the IRGC gonna do about it?
What they would do about it is not a tenth as important as what a crew who have been informed that such would be an illegal act would do about it.
It is not illegal to surrender a ship in a no win situation. The only exception I could think of is if it was a cutting edge high tech vessel and that brings us back to scuttling the ship.
Well, the Google AI response was
" Under current wartime conditions (as of March 2026), Iranian military personnel, including captains, are explicitly ordered by U.S. leadership to surrender or face “certain death” . However, historical and recent actions by the Iranian military suggest a doctrine that often prioritizes resistance or sinking over surrender."
Iranian doctrine may hold more sway than U.S. doctrine when it comes to what an Iranian captain might do.
Sure, I guess if the crew felt like it, they could mutiny and attack the Americans when they come to pick up the ship after the captain surrenders, in which case they might get a sucker punch off an an American ship shortly before finding themselves at the bottom of the sea.
Moderating:
Going forward, please place AI statements in Quote tags and bold the from Google AI part.
I’ll fix your post.
Uh, no. What is more likely to happen in a case like that is the crew rebelling and replacing the captain before we ever get our hands on it.
“Prioritize resistance or sinking over surrender” doesn’t sound like it’s in accordance with “ask Sri Lanka to hide out in port for the rest of the war” either, so if that’s what Iranian doctrine calls for, they may not be following it anyways.
Thank you.