An Iranian warship destroyed in a US torpedo strike on Wednesday was “defenceless” and participating in an international naval exercise as a guest of the Indian navy, according to reports.
Former Indian Foreign Secretary Kanwal Sibal said “the Iranian ship will not be where it was if we had not invited it to talk [sic] part in our Milan exercise”. Sibal added that because it was taking part in an exercise “it was defenceless”.
Indian politician Supriya Shrinate said on social media: "These Iranian navy men parading at an event in India, were our guests. Invited by us.
“US submarine targeted their ship and killed them while they were returning home.” Shrinate also criticised Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi for his failure to make a statement on the attack.
Wow that’s fucked up on multiple levels.
to attack a literally defenseless warship … Could you not have, you know, boarded it instead? Forced it to surrender? Feels like at that point you can just threaten to do what you did and they would have to comply.
if you’ve seen the released periscope footage of the attack, and realize that that explosion was fully from the torpedo and not from an ammo store blowing, it makes it look that much more like an intentional massacre. Is there really no smaller munition on board that sub that can be used to disable a defenseless target?
Please note: in no way am I attempting to be an apologist here. I’m just trying to point out that some parts of this story are not terribly believable, and that attack subs have very particular capabilities and constraints that they operate with. The order was shitty. But at the end of the day, it was an enemy vessel, and the sub’s CO got an order to sink it.
It would said without munitions because that’s what it was asked to do as a GUEST in a third-party country.
Just because Americans act like children, doesn’t mean adults don’t exists.
Because they were invited to an international naval exercise that required them to be unarmed…
Yeah, no one’s arguing that whoever was ordered to push the button was ordered to push the button, the point is that it was a shitty order to give.
It’s also rich to be like “we had to attack them, we’re at war”, when you illegally and unilaterally started the war several days earlier.
If they had no intelligence of the ammunition situation (doubt) it could be risky to try to board a warship. Not that it justifies anything, just aside from piracy boarding enemy warships isn’t really a thing anymore as far as I’m aware.
I mean, there’s literally no way the US didn’t know it was on the way back from an ammo-less exercise. The Indian naval exercises were very public, with 74 countries participating.
Profound incompetence seems like a possibility tbh. They absolutely should have known about it but it sure seems like they’re basically just fucking around, not taking things seriously. So I’d definitely believe that they saw an Iranian warship pull up and were like “WTF is that doing there? Kill it!”.
I don’t think that should excuse their actions, but it does seem like a believable chain of events.
Like a bunch of drunk rednecks driving around in their truck shooting at road signs.
Whos to say they didn’t pack some munitions with them anyway? Without another nation checking the ship you just have to take their word for it.
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I mean fair point, I can’t find any info on whether or not anyone verifies that the ships are unloaded or if it’s self reported. And it does seem unlikely that a nation would let another country inspect it’s warship.
More unlikey than letting dozens of armed warships into your seas, without any controls?