India permitted an Iranian warship to dock at one of its ports as a humanitarian measure, according to Foreign Minister Subrahmanyam Jaishankar. The move came on the same day the United States sank another Iranian naval vessel off the coast of Sri Lanka.
The Iranian ship Lavan arrived at the southern Indian port of Kochi on Wednesday after Tehran made an urgent request, an Indian government source told Reuters. The docking took place on the same day a U.S. submarine reportedly struck the Iranian frigate Dena.
U.S. President Donald Trump has stated that destroying Iran’s navy is one of the objectives of the ongoing conflict between the United States and Israel against Iran, which began a week ago.
Jaishankar described the Lavan as an amphibious landing vessel and said it, along with two other ships, had been scheduled for a fleet review but became affected by the unfolding events.
“We approached the matter from a humanitarian perspective, regardless of any legal complexities,” he said. “I believe we did the right thing.”
The U.S. strike on the Iranian frigate Dena reportedly killed at least 87 people while the vessel was in Sri Lanka’s exclusive economic zone, about 19 nautical miles from the coast and outside its territorial waters.
India received the request for the Lavan to dock on February 28—the day the Iran conflict began—because the vessel had reportedly developed technical issues and required urgent assistance, the government source said.
The 183 crew members of the ship were accommodated at naval facilities in Kochi.
The Dena had been returning from a naval exercise organized by India, according to official sources and information from the exercise’s website.
Sri Lankan authorities also reported that they were escorting another Iranian naval ship, the Booshehr, to a harbor on the eastern coast and relocating most of its crew to a naval facility near Colombo.