New Delhi, India — Dressed in a blue Navy uniform and sleek sunglasses, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in late October, addressed a gathering of the country’s sea warriors.
He listed out the strategic significance of the Indian Ocean — the massive volumes of trade and oil that pass through it. “The Indian Navy is the guardian of the Indian Ocean,” he then said, to loud, proud chants of “Long Live Mother India” from his audience.
Less than five months later, India has been shown up as a “guardian”, unable to protect its own guest.
On Wednesday, the Iranian warship, IRIS Dena, was torpedoed by a US submarine just 44 nautical miles off (81km) southern Sri Lanka, as it was returning home from naval drills hosted by India. During the “Milan” biennial multilateral naval exercise, Indian President Droupadi Murmu had posed with sailors from the Dena.
Yet it took the Indian Navy more than a day after the Iranian warship was struck to respond formally to the attack, which US officials made clear was a sign of how the Donald Trump administration was willing and ready to expand its war against Iran.
“An American submarine sank an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters,” US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at the Pentagon on Wednesday. “Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo. Quiet death.”
Tehran is furious over the attack on its warship hundreds of miles away from home. And Iran made sure to note that the IRIS Dena warship was “a guest of India’s navy”, returning after completing the exercise it joined upon New Delhi’s invitation.
“The US has perpetrated an atrocity at sea, 2,000 miles [3,218km] away from Iran’s shores,” Iran’s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said, referring to the sinking of the frigate. “Mark my words: The US will come to bitterly regret [the] precedent it has set.”
Now, the IRIS Dena is at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, and more than 80 Iranian sailors, who marched during joint parades and posed for selfies with Indian naval officers during their two-week visit, are dead.
What has also fallen, said retired Indian naval officers and analysts, is India’s self-image as a net security provider in the Indian Ocean. Instead, they said, the US attack on the Dena has exposed the limits of India’s power and influence in its own maritime back yard.
‘War reaches India’s backyard’
After participating in the naval exercises, IRIS Dena left Visakhapatnam on India’s eastern coast on February 26. It was hit in international waters, just south of Sri Lanka’s territorial waters, in the early hours of March 4, local time.
In response, Sri Lankan Navy rescuers recovered more than 80 bodies and picked up 32 survivors, reportedly including the commander and some senior officers from the warship. More than 100 men are still missing.
In a tweet welcoming the Dena to the naval drills, the Indian Navy’s Eastern Command had posted: “Her arrival … [reflects] long-standing cultural links between the two nations [Iran and India]”.
Vice Admiral Shekhar Sinha, the former vice chief of India’s naval staff, told Al Jazeera that he attended the Iranian parade at the function.
“I met and really liked them, especially their march for sailors travelling thousands of miles,” Sinha said. “It is always sad to see a ship sinking. But in a war, emotions don’t work. There’s nothing ethical in a war.”
Sinha said that the Indian Ocean — central to the strategic and energy security of the nation with the world’s largest population — was thought to be a fairly safe zone earlier. “But that is not the case, as we are learning now,” he told Al Jazeera.
“The unfolding battle [between the US and Israel on the one hand, and Iran on the other] has reached India’s back yard. New Delhi has to be concerned,” Sinha, who served in the Indian Navy for four decades, added. “The liberty we enjoyed in the Indian Ocean has apparently shrunk.”
India’s Catch-22 situation
Only on Thursday evening did the Indian Navy issue any formal statement on the a