The ship was reported to be taking part in naval exercises hosted by New Delhi and was 'defenceless'

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.

  • gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.worksEnglish
    55·
    4 hours ago
    • this is all so fucking dumb
    • its… uh… a frigate. Frankly, I doubt the claim that it was unarmed. You can look up the weapon systems specs on that page trivially. It is also armed with torpedoes, and supported an ASW chopper, and so conceivably could pose a threat to a submarine if it detected one. You can see the box launchers for ASMs on the deck, for fuck’s sake.
    • in a context where country A is engaging in open hostilities with country B, military vessels of the opposing side are fair game in international waters.
    • in terms of picking up survivors: extremely shitty, yes, but… what is a submarine supposed to do? They’re notoriously cramped already. Not to mention, taking on a bunch of enemy survivors onto a highly classified submarine that has a somewhat smaller crew compliment than the target vessel doesn’t sound like a thing any sane sub commander would do.
    • Randomgal@lemmy.caEnglish
      2·
      12 minutes ago

      Disarmed doesn’t mean ‘it has no weapons’ it means weapons were unloaded or otherwise ‘disarmed’.

      Wtf are you even saying?