NEW DELHI, India — Wearing a blue navy uniform and sleek sunglasses, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi addressed a gathering of the country’s sea warriors in late October.
He cited the strategic importance of the Indian Ocean, the large amount of trade and oil that passes through it. “The Indian Navy is the guardian of the Indian Ocean,” he said, to loud and proud chants of “Long live Mother India” from the audience.
Less than five months later, India emerged as a “guardian” unable to protect its own guests.
On Wednesday, the Iranian warship Iris Dena was torpedoed by a U.S. submarine just 44 nautical miles (81 kilometers) south of Sri Lanka while returning from an Indian naval exercise. Indian President Drupadi Murmu poses with sailors from the Dena during the biennial multilateral naval exercise Milan.
However, it took more than a day after the attack on the Iranian warship for the Indian Navy to formally respond to the attack, which U.S. officials said was a sign of President Donald Trump’s administration’s desire and readiness to escalate the war against Iran.
“A U.S. submarine sank an Iranian warship that we thought was safe on the high seas,” Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said Wednesday at the Pentagon. “Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo. A quiet death.”
The Iranian government is outraged by the attack on a country’s warship hundreds of miles from its homeland. And Iran made sure to point out that the IRIS Dena warship was a “guest of the Indian Navy” and had returned from an exercise in which it participated at New Delhi’s invitation.
Referring to the frigate sinking, Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Aragushi said, “The United States committed an atrocity at sea 2,000 miles (3,218 km) from the coast of Iran.” “Mark my words. The United States will deeply regret the precedent it set.”
The IRIS Dena is now at the bottom of the Indian Ocean, killing more than 80 Iranian sailors who marched during a joint parade and posed for selfies with Indian naval officers during a two-week visit.
India’s self-image as a provider of internet security in the Indian Ocean has also deteriorated, retired Indian naval officers and analysts said. Rather, they said, the US attack on Dena exposed the limits of India’s power and influence in its own maritime backyard.
“The war extends to India’s backyard.”
IRIS Dena left Visakhapatnam on India’s east coast on February 26 after participating in naval exercises. The collision occurred in international waters just south of Sri Lankan territorial waters in the early hours of March 4 local time.
In response, Sri Lankan Navy rescue teams reportedly recovered more than 80 bodies and removed 32 survivors from the warship, including the commander and several senior officers. More than 100 men are still missing.
“Her arrival…reflects the long-standing cultural ties between our two countries (Iran and India),” the Indian Navy’s Eastern Command said in a tweet welcoming Dena’s participation in the naval exercise.
Vice-Admiral Shekhar Sinha, former Indian Naval Chief of Staff, told Al Jazeera that he attended the Iranian parade at the ceremony.
“I met them and really liked them, especially the march for sailors who travel thousands of miles,” Sinha said. “It’s always sad to see a ship sink. But emotions don’t work in war. There’s nothing moral about war.”
Sinha said the Indian Ocean, the world’s most populous region and the center of strategic and energy security, was previously considered a fairly safe area. “But as we are now learning, that is not the case,” he told Al Jazeera.
Sinha, who served in the Indian Navy for 40 years, added: “The battle (being waged between the US, Israel and Iran) has reached India’s backyard. New Delhi should be concerned.” “The freedoms we enjoyed in the Indian Ocean appear to have clearly diminished.”
India’s catch-22 situation
Only on Thursday evening, more than 24 hours after the Dena was torpedoed, did the Indian Navy issue an official statement regarding the attack.
The Navy announced that it had received a distress signal from the Iranian ship and decided to deploy personnel to help rescue the sailors. But by then, the Sri Lankan Navy had already stepped in to lead the rescue operation, the paper said.
Neither New Delhi nor the Navy has criticized, even mildly, the US decision to sink the Iranian warship.
Military analysts and former Indian naval officers say India is caught in a classic Catch-22: Did it know about the impending U.S. attack on Iranian warships in the Indian Ocean, or was it blindsided by nuclear submarines in its backyard?
Admiral Arun Prakash, a former Indian naval chief of staff, told Al Jazeera that if New Delhi is blindsided, “it will reflect directly on the US-India relationship.”
“If that was a surprise, that’s a big concern because we have a so-called strategic partnership with the United States.”
And if India knew about this attack, many would see it as strategically siding with the US and Israel regarding the war with Iran.
C. Uday Bhaskar, a former Indian naval officer who now heads the New Delhi-based independent think tank Institute for Policy Research, said the US sinking of an Iranian warship in the Indian Ocean has disrupted India’s perception of itself as a “net security provider” in the region.
Bhaskar said the incident was a “strategic embarrassment” for India and undermined New Delhi’s credibility in the Indian Ocean, while the country’s moral standing “has taken a hit” due to the Indian government’s near-silence.
“India is on the side of the invaders”
In the postcolonial world order, India was a leader in the Non-Aligned Movement, a Cold War-era neutrality posture adopted by several developing countries.
India no longer calls its approach non-alignment, but instead “strategic autonomy.” But in reality, it is inching closer to America, its allies, and most importantly, Israel.
Just two days before the US and Israel bombed Iran, Prime Minister Modi visited Israel, addressed parliament and warmly embraced Indian Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, calling him “brother”.
But Iran, led by the late Ayatollah Khamenei, was also a friend of India, with New Delhi making strategic, business and humanitarian investments in the country.
However, Prime Minister Modi has not expressed a single word of condolence after Khamenei’s assassination. On Thursday, Indian Foreign Minister Vikram Misri visited the Iranian embassy in New Delhi and signed a commemorative book. The Indian government typically sends ministers, rather than bureaucrats or diplomats, to such heavy-duty events.
Against this backdrop, India’s response to the Dena attack is attracting attention.
Indian military historian and strategic analyst Srinath Raghavan said India had “no formal responsibility” because the frigate was attacked while in international waters.
“However, the US Navy’s actions highlight both the geographic scope of this war and the sharp limits of India’s ability to manage, let alone control, its aftermath,” Raghavan told Al Jazeera.
Diplomatically, he said, “India is objectively on the side of the aggressor in this war because of its mission to visit Israel on the eve of the war and its failure to condemn or even express official condolences for the assassination of Iran’s head of state.” Prime Minister Modi visited Israel on February 25-26.
Mallikarjun Kharge, leader of India’s opposition Nationalist Congress Party, said the Modi government had recklessly abandoned “India’s strategic and national interests”. The government’s silence “hurts India’s core national interests and destroys our foreign policy, which has been carefully and painstakingly constructed and adhered to by successive governments over many years.”
Furthermore, Raghavan stressed that Modi was only criticizing Iran’s retaliation, which could bring the Gulf region to the brink of war.
“It is hard not to conclude that India has significantly diminished its interests in relations with Iran,” he said.
“All of this will undermine India’s credibility as a player in the region and will have both short- and long-term implications for West Asia (India’s term for the Middle East) stocks,” Raghavan told Al Jazeera.
