U.S. pressing Sri Lanka not to repatriate Iranian crew and survivors from sunken ship, memo says
The Hindu
U.S. urges Sri Lanka to withhold repatriation of Iranian crew and survivors from a sunken warship, internal memo reveals.
The United States is pressing Sri Lanka’s government not to repatriate the survivors from the Iranian warship it sank this week, as well as the crew of a second Iranian ship that is in Sri Lankan custody, according to an internal State Department cable seen by Reuters on Friday (March 6, 2026).
A U.S. submarine sank the IRIS Dena warship in the Indian Ocean about 19 nautical miles off Sri Lanka’s southern port city of Galle on Wednesday, killing dozens of sailors and dramatically widening Washington’s pursuit of the Iranian navy.
On Thursday, Sri Lanka began offloading 208 crew members from a second Iranian ship, the naval auxiliary vessel IRIS Booshehr, which had found itself stranded in Sri Lanka’s exclusive economic zone but outside its maritime boundary.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said his island nation had a “humanitarian responsibility” to take in the crew.
Also Read | Iranian Minister at Raisina Dialogue slams U.S. attack on ‘unarmed’ vessel returning from India
The torpedoing of the Dena - which U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth described as “quiet death” - was the first such action by the United States since World War Two and a clear sign of the Iran conflict’s widening geographic scope.
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