US submarine sank Iranian warship off Sri Lanka’s coast, Hegseth says

Defence secretary confirms strike on Iris Dena in first US attack on Iranian forces outside Middle East during conflict

The US has carried out a submarine torpedo strike that sank an Iranian warship off the south coast of Sri Lanka, according to the US secretary of defence.

Pete Hegseth confirmed that the US was behind the deadly strike on an Iranian frigate that killed more than 80 people, as it was sailing close to the Sri Lankan coast.

“An American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters,” Hegseth said. He said the attack was carried out by a US navy submarine late on Tuesday night. It was one of the few instances of a submarine sinking a ship since the second world war.

“It was sunk by a torpedo, a quiet death – the first sinking of an enemy ship by a torpedo since world war II,” said Hegseth. “Like in that war, back when we were still the war department, we are fighting to win.”

According to Sri Lanka’s foreign affairs minister, Vijitha Herath, the Sri Lankan coastguard received a distress call from an Iranian navy ship, the Iris Dena, at 5.08am on Wednesday. Crew members had described the incident as an explosion.

“By 6am we dispatched a naval vessel and by 7am the second naval vessel,” Herath said. He said Sri Lanka had an obligation to respond to their call for help as the country was a signatory to the international convention on maritime search and rescue.

The Iranian ship was outside Sri Lanka’s territorial waters but still within its economic zone, 44 nautical miles (81km) off the southern coastal city of Galle.

Aruna Jayasekara, Sri Lanka’s deputy minister of defence, confirmed that 83 bodies had been recovered from the site of the strike. According to officials, 32 of the crew were rescued alive and taken to a hospital in Galle.

The deadly strike comes amid the war in the Middle East, after the US and Israel launched joint strikes on Iran over the weekend. The submarine strike marks an escalation in hostilities and is the first US attack on Iran’s military to take place outside the Middle East since the war began.

The Iris Dena warship was the newest frigate in the Iranian naval fleet and was equipped with surface-to-air missiles, anti-ship missiles, cannon, machine guns and torpedo launchers. The vessel was probably passing by Sri Lanka as it returned from the international fleet review, which was hosted by the Indian navy last week.

The Sri Lanka navy spokesperson Buddhika Sampath said rescue efforts were continuing and the main focus of the operation was to “help survivors”.

A senior Sri Lankan official told the Guardian the Iranian embassy in Colombo had indicated through back channels that they believed their ship had been targeted by a US strike.

The official said the Iranians claimed that the ship’s defence and counterattack capabilities were disabled by electromagnetic means before the attack. The Iranian government has yet to officially comment on the incident.

Another Sri Lankan defence source said it appeared that the vessel had been hit by two torpedoes that struck the middle of the ship.

Rohan Gunaratna, a well-connected Sri Lankan defence analyst, confirmed he had been informed that the ship had been targeted by the US in a torpedo attack from a submarine.

The main US naval base in the Indian Ocean is Diego Garcia, located in the Chagos archipelago, more than 1,000 miles (1,600km) away from Sri Lanka.

The US involvement in the targeting of the Iranian ship signals a further escalation of its military attacks on Iran. The heavy bombardment has already killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, and dozens of other high-ranking Iranian officials, as well as targeting Iran’s ballistic missile and air defence systems.

In response, Iran launched missile strikes across the Middle East and halted all shipments through the strait of Hormuz, the world’s most critical oil-shipping corridor. The strikes continued into a fifth day on Wednesday, as Israel launched a further wave of strikes on the Iranian capital, Tehran.

On Wednesday, Sri Lanka’s president, Anura Kumara Dissanayake, tweeted his solidarity with the United Arab Emirates after it was targeted in retaliatory strikes by Iran, stating that Sri Lanka “stands firmly with the UAE and is ready to assist in any way it can”.