India has allowed an Iranian warship to dock as a humanitarian gesture, Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar said on Saturday, after the U.S. sank another Iranian navy vessel off neighboring Sri Lanka.
A fisherman moves on the waters of Vembanad Lake with the Iranian ship IRIS Lavan docked at a port in the background, in Kochi, India today. Sivaram Venkitasubramanian / Reuters
The Lavan docked at India’s southern port of Kochi on Wednesday, the same day the U.S. submarine struck Iranian navy frigate Dena, after an urgent request from Tehran, an Indian government source told Reuters.
President Trump has said destroying the Iranian navy is one aim of the war he and Israel launched against the Islamic Republic a week ago.
The Lavan — an amphibious landing vessel, according to the U.S. Naval Institute’s online news site — and two other ships “were coming in for a fleet review and then they got, in a way, caught on the wrong side of the events,” Jaishankar told the annual Raisina Dialogue event.
At least 87 people were killed in the U.S. attack on the Dena in Sri Lanka’s exclusive economic zone 19 nautical miles off the coast, outside its maritime boundaries.
