U.S. Submarine Sinks Iranian Frigate Off Sri Lanka, Hegseth Says

A U.S. Navy submarine sank an Iranian frigate in the Indian Ocean off Sri Lanka, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said on Wednesday. “An American submarine sunk an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters,” Hegseth said, calling it “a quiet death” and saying it was the first enemy ship sunk by torpedo since World War II, according to The National News Desk. France 24 reported that the Defense Department released footage it says shows the strike, and that Hegseth said “we are fighting to win.”

The ship was the IRIS Dena, an Iranian navy frigate. It sank off the southern coast of Sri Lanka near the port of Galle. Sri Lankan Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath said the coast guard received a distress call and that naval ships were sent under international rescue obligations, the news desk reported.

Sri Lankan officials said 32 sailors were rescued and taken to a hospital in Galle and that 87 bodies had been recovered, according to both the news desk and France 24. Sigmalive, citing Al Jazeera and The Independent, said the ship carried around 180 crew members. France 24 reported that 61 people remained missing, a figure that differed from the larger number of missing crew other reports gave, and that two navy craft and a plane had been sent to search. A navy spokesman said crews found people in the water with no ship visible, only oil patches and life rafts, the news desk reported. The totals were still changing on Wednesday and have not been independently verified.

Iran’s embassy in Colombo told Sri Lankan officials through diplomatic channels that Tehran believes the United States deliberately targeted the ship, and representatives claimed its defenses may have been disabled beforehand, according to the news desk; that claim has not been independently confirmed. France 24 reported that Iran’s ambassador in Colombo was not immediately available for comment.

The sinking is a significant escalation of the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran, which began over the weekend with strikes that killed Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. How Iran will respond to an attack so far from its own waters remained unclear on Wednesday.