Iranian warship ‘sitting duck’ sunk by US torpedo ‘to warn China’

Iran’s Iris Dena frigate, sunk on Wednesday near Sri Lanka, had no chance against the US Navy and was torpedoed in part to warn China that its ships in the Indian Ocean would be vulnerable in a wider war, according to Royal Australian Navy commander Jennifer Parker.

“I feel for the sailors who lost their lives,” she told The Nightly. “But that ship should have never sailed in international waters. It was a sitting duck.

“I think the sinking of the ship may be intended as a message in part to China as well. That message is of the vulnerability of one of their valuable maritime trade routes.”

The sinking of the 11-year-old frigate, a medium-sized warship designed to protect bigger vessels, demonstrates the danger America’s nuclear-powered submarine fleet poses to enemy ships travelling maritime choke points.

“An American submarine sank an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters,” US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said at the Pentagon. “Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo. Quiet death.”

Chinese burn

Last year China imported about 1.4 million barrels of oil a day from Iran, which was shipped past Sri Lanka through the Malacca Strait. The Chinese government has called for the fighting to stop but taken no steps to support Iran militarily or economically.

Last year military analyst Malcolm Davis put the chances of China invading Taiwan in the next few years at 50 per cent. Over the last several months, China has become even more aggressive to its smaller neighbour, including military drills that simulated a blockade of the island, according to the International Crisis Group.

“The statements suggest that it is ready to use coercive means, if necessary, in pursuit of that end,” to take control, the think tank said in a report three days ago.

President Donald Trump plans visit to Beijing at the end of this month March and the beginning of April, when he is expected to discuss the status of Taiwan with Chinese President Xi Jinping. The US military is the primary deterrent to an invasion of Taiwan.

Exposed

Sri Lankan medical officials in the port city of Galle said they rescued 32 sailors from the ship and recovered 87 bodies. The ship, which may have had a crew of 180 and sent out a distress signal early in the morning, was the first sunk by a US torpedo since World War II. It had recently participated in exercises with the Indian navy in the Bay of Bengal.

The ship’s commander and senior officers were among the survivors, Sri Lankan sources told Reuters. “We found people floating in the water and rescued them,” Sri Lankan navy spokesman Commander Buddhika Sampath told reporters. “Later on, we found upon inquiring that they belonged to the Iranian ship.”

Ms Parker, a former second in command of the frigate HMAS Darwin who specialised in anti-submarine warfare, said the Iranian navy should have never left the Iris Dena exposed without protection, including submarine-hunting aircraft.

Despite operating a radar with a range of 300km, the Dena could not see the submarine that destroyed it because it was probably limited to a medium-range sonar attacked to its hull, she said.

General Dan Caine, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said the ship was destroyed by a Mark-48 heavyweight torpedo, which is designed to explode underneath a ship and break its keel. Photographs issued by the US Navy showed the bow being thrust into the air before sinking into the ocean.

Australia, which operates six diesel-power submarines, has agreed to buy a new US-British nuclear submarine that will be known as the AUKUS class and is expected to begin operating in the late 2030s although the Royal Australian Navy will have to wait until the 2040s.