New Delhi, India \u2014 <\/strong>Dressed in a blue Navy uniform and sleek sunglasses, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in late October, addressed a gathering of the country\u2019s sea warriors.<\/p>\n He listed out the strategic significance of the Indian Ocean \u2014 the massive volumes of trade and oil that pass through it. \u201cThe Indian Navy is the guardian of the Indian Ocean,\u201d he then said, to loud, proud chants of \u201cLong Live Mother India\u201d from his audience.<\/p>\n Less than five months later, India has been shown up as a \u201cguardian\u201d, unable to protect its own guest.<\/p>\n 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 \u201cMilan\u201d biennial multilateral naval exercise, Indian President Droupadi Murmu had posed with sailors from the Dena.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n \u201cAn American submarine sank an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters,\u201d US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at the Pentagon on Wednesday. \u201cInstead, it was sunk by a torpedo. Quiet death.\u201d<\/p>\n 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\u00a0 \u201ca guest of India\u2019s navy\u201d, returning after completing the exercise it joined upon New Delhi\u2019s invitation.<\/p>\n \u201cThe US has perpetrated an atrocity at sea, 2,000 miles [3,218km] away from Iran\u2019s shores,\u201d Iran\u2019s foreign minister Abbas Araghchi said, referring to the sinking of the frigate. \u201cMark my words: The US will come to bitterly regret [the] precedent it has set.\u201d<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n What has also fallen, said retired Indian naval officers and analysts, is India\u2019s 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\u2019s power and influence in its own maritime back yard.<\/p>\n After participating in the naval exercises, IRIS Dena left Visakhapatnam on India\u2019s eastern coast on February 26. It was hit in international waters, just south of Sri Lanka\u2019s territorial waters, in the early hours of March 4, local time.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n In a tweet welcoming the Dena to the naval drills, the Indian Navy\u2019s Eastern Command had posted: \u201cHer arrival \u2026 [reflects] long-standing cultural links between the two nations [Iran and India]\u201d.<\/p>\n Vice Admiral Shekhar Sinha, the former vice chief of India\u2019s naval staff, told Al Jazeera that he attended the Iranian parade at the function.<\/p>\n \u201cI met and really liked them, especially their march for sailors travelling thousands of miles,\u201d Sinha said. \u201cIt is always sad to see a ship sinking. But in a war, emotions don\u2019t work. There\u2019s nothing ethical in a war.\u201d<\/p>\n Sinha said that the Indian Ocean \u2014 central to the strategic and energy security of the nation with the world\u2019s largest population \u2014 was thought to be a fairly safe zone earlier. \u201cBut that is not the case, as we are learning now,\u201d he told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n \u201cThe unfolding battle [between the US and Israel on the one hand, and Iran on the other] has reached India\u2019s back yard.\u2029New Delhi has to be concerned,\u201d Sinha, who served in the Indian Navy for four decades, added. \u201cThe liberty we enjoyed in the Indian Ocean has apparently shrunk.\u201d<\/p>\n Only on Thursday evening did the Indian Navy issue any formal statement on the attack \u2014 more than 24 hours after the Dena was hit by a torpedo.<\/p>\n The Navy said that it received distress signals from the Iranian ship and had decided on deploying resources to help with rescuing sailors. But by then, it said, the Sri Lankan Navy had already stepped to lead the rescue effort.<\/p>\n Neither New Delhi nor the Navy has criticised \u2014 even mildly \u2014 the decision by the US to sink the Iranian warship.<\/p>\n Military analysts and former Indian naval officers say India is caught in a classic catch-22: Was India aware of the incoming US attack in the Indian Ocean on an Iranian warship, or was it blindsided by a nuclear-submarine in its backyard?<\/p>\n Admiral Arun Prakash, the former chief of India\u2019s naval staff, told Al Jazeera that if New Delhi was blindsided, \u201cit reflects on the US-India relationship directly.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIf it is a surprise, then that\u2019s a great concern since we have a so-called strategic partnership with the USA.\u201d<\/p>\n And if India knew about the attacks, it would be seen by many as strategically siding with the US and Israel over their war on Iran.<\/p>\n C Uday Bhaskar, a retired Indian Navy officer and currently the director of the Society for Policy Studies, an independent think tank based in New Delhi, said that the US sinking an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean muddies the Indian perception of itself as a \u201cnet security provider\u201d in the region.<\/p>\n Bhaskar said the incident is a \u201cstrategic embarrassment\u201d for India and weakens New Delhi\u2019s credibility in the Indian Ocean, while its moral standing \u201ctakes a beating\u201d because of the Indian government\u2019s near-silence.<\/p>\n In the post-colonial world order, India was a leader of the non-alignment movement, the Cold War-era neutrality posture adopted by several developing nations.<\/p>\n India now no longer calls its approach non-alignment, instead referring to it as \u201cstrategic autonomy\u201d. But, in reality, it has inched closer to the United States and its allies, most importantly, Israel.<\/p>\n Merely two days before the US and Israel bombed Iran, Modi was in Israel, addressing the Knesset and warmly hugging Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who called his Indian counterpart a brother.<\/p>\n But Iran, under the late Supreme Leader Khamenei, was a friend of India as well, with New Delhi making strategic, business, and humanitarian investments in the country.<\/p>\n However, Modi has not said a word in condolence after Khamenei\u2019s assassination. On Thursday, Indian Foreign Secretary Vikram Misri visited the Iranian embassy in New Delhi to sign a memorial book. Indian governments normally deploy ministers \u2014 not bureaucrats or diplomats \u2014 for such sombre occasions.<\/p>\n It is against that backdrop that India\u2019s response to the attack on the Dena has come under scrutiny.<\/p>\n Because the frigate was hit when it was in international waters, India had \u201cno formal responsibility\u201d, said Srinath Raghavan, an Indian military historian and strategic analyst.<\/p>\n \u201cBut the US Navy\u2019s actions underline both the spreading geography of this war and the sharp limits of India\u2019s ability to manage, let alone control, its fallout,\u201d Raghavan told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n Diplomatically, India has \u201cobjectively positioned itself on the side of the aggressors in this war,\u201d he said, by \u201cacts of commission \u2014 visit to Israel on the eve of war \u2014 and of omission, with not even [an] official condolence, let alone condemnation, of the assassination of the Iranian head of state.\u201d Modi visited Israel on February 25-26.<\/p>\n Mallikarjun Kharge, the president of India\u2019s opposition Congress party, said the Modi government had recklessly abdicated \u201cIndia\u2019s strategic and national interests\u201d. And the government\u2019s silence \u201cdemeans India\u2019s core national interests and destroys our foreign policy, carefully and painstakingly built and followed by successive governments over the years.\u201d<\/p>\n In addition, Raghavan highlighted that Modi has only criticised Iran\u2019s retaliation, which threatens to drag the Gulf region to the brink of war.<\/p>\n \u201cIt is difficult not to conclude that India has drastically downgraded its interests in the relationship with Iran,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cAll of this detracts from India\u2019s credibility as a player in the region and will have short and long-term consequences for the equities in West Asia [as the Middle East is referred to in India],\u201d Raghavan told Al Jazeera.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n New Delhi, India \u2014 Dressed in a blue Navy uniform and sleek sunglasses, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, in late October, addressed a gathering of the country\u2019s sea warriors. He listed out the strategic significance of the Indian Ocean \u2014 the massive volumes of trade and oil that pass through it. \u201cThe Indian Navy is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14071,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14070","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-asia-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14070","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=14070"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14070\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/14071"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=14070"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=14070"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inernews.online\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=14070"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/reuters_69a95e12-1772707346.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
\u2018War reaches India\u2019s backyard\u2019<\/h2>\n
![\"iris](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/2026-03-05T083352Z_1864618304_RC22YJA5YGQP_RTRMADP_3_IRAN-CRISIS-SHIP-SRI-LANKA-1772718589.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
India\u2019s Catch-22 situation<\/h2>\n
![\"IRIS](\"https:\/\/www.aljazeera.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/03\/2026-03-05T103736Z_1658623672_RC29YJAIBYUA_RTRMADP_3_IRAN-CRISIS-SHIP-SRI-LANKA-1772718600.jpg?w=770&resize=770%2C513&quality=80\")
\u2018India on aggressor\u2019s side\u2019<\/h2>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"