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Iranian warship sank by US sub in Indian Ocean, Hegseth says

Yogita Limaye,South Asia and Afghanistan correspondentand
Alys Davies
Reuters Iranian military ship the Iris Dena is pictured berthed in Rio de Janeiro's port, Brazil, on 28 February, 2023.Reuters
File photo of the Iris Dena docked in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, in 2023

US Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth has said an American submarine sank an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean.

He said the ship was sunk by a torpedo on Tuesday, and that it died a "quiet death".

Hegseth did not name the ship, but his announcement came after Sri Lankan officials said its navy had responded to a distress call from an Iranian ship on Wednesday morning named the Iris Dena, which had gone down about 40km (25 miles) from its southern coastline.

Eighty bodies were found aboard the ship by rescuers, a Sri Lankan defence official told BBC Sinhala. Another 32 were rescued, the Sri Lankan navy said.

A navy spokesman said some 180 people were believed to have been aboard the Iris Dena, based on the ship's documentation.

The survivors were "seriously injured" and had been taken to a hospital in the southern port of Galle, foreign affairs minister Vijitha Herath said.

Hegseth told a news conference on Wednesday that a US submarine had sunk an Iranian warship "that thought it was safe in international waters".

He also claimed it was "the first sinking of an enemy ship by a torpedo since World War Two".

While it is the first time since 1945 that an American submarine has sunk an enemy ship this way, the UK and Pakistan have both sunk vessels using torpedoes since then.

Earlier, Sri Lankan navy spokesman Budhika Sampath rejected reports that the Iris Dena had been attacked by a submarine.

He added that, at the time rescue operations were launched, rescuers had not seen the vessel - nor any other ships in the region - but saw oil patches and life rafts floating on the water.

Though the ship's location "was beyond our waters", Sampath said, "it was within our search and rescue region. So we were obliged to respond as per international obligations".

First launched in 2015, the Iris Dena is a destroyer attached to Iran's Southern Fleet, which is tasked with deployments in the Strait of Hormuz and Gulf of Oman.

It had recently participated in International Fleet Review 2026, a military exercise hosted by India.

The sinking of the Iris Dena comes as the US and Israel have continued to launch air strikes on Iran for a fifth day, with the Israeli military saying it had hit "security headquarters" across the capital, Tehran, on Wednesday.

Iran appears to have continued to carry out retaliatory attacks. New strikes were reported in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait on Wednesday, while Turkey said "Nato defences" shot down an Iranian missile heading towards Turkish territory.

Sri Lanka has remained neutral over the current conflict in the Middle East.

A map showing the Arabian Sea region including Iran, Oman, Saudi Arabia, India, and Sri Lanka. A red label near Sri Lanka marks the location where the Iris Dena sank near Galle. The Strait of Hormuz is labelled between Iran and Oman. In the upper-right corner, an inset photo shows a grey naval ship docked at a port with cranes in the background, labelled the Iris Dena in Brazil in 2023. A small world map in the upper-left highlights the region with a red rectangle.