By Darini Rajasingham Senanayake*
COLOMBO, Sri Lanka | 17 March 2026 (IDN) —The bodies of eighty-four Iranian sailors who died in a US torpedo attack in the seas of Sri Lanka were repatriated yesterday, 13 March 2026. Describing the scene of the rescue of some of the sailors who survived the dastardly attack, the Sri Lanka Navy Commander Buddhika Sampath said that the boats that reached the location of the distress call on March 4 had observed only an oil slick.
In Washington, Donald Trump and his War Secretary had boasted that they had finished off the Iranian Navy. “An American submarine sank an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters,” U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth said at the Pentagon. “Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo. Quiet death.”
“We found people floating in the water and rescued them,” Sri Lankan Navy officer Sampath told reporters. “Later on, we found upon inquiring that they belonged to the Iranian ship.”
The sunken IRIS Dena was unarmed, having just participated in the International Fleet Review in India’s Nagapatnam. Had the Colombo regime of President Anura Kumara Dissanayaka not delayed, like the Modi regime in India, in providing safe harbour to the IRIS Dena due to US pressure, the war crime would likely not have happened in the island’s maritime Exclusive Economic Zone.
Subsequently, a second Iranian Ship was given harbour in Sri Lanka, enabling the Colombo regime to play up its humanitarian role while citing UNCLOS.
Environmental Damage
A couple of days after the sinking of IRIS Dena, fishers and coastal communities in Hikkaduwa, Galle, and Unawatuna noticed a thick oil patch along the coast, impacting the island nation’s coastal economy, fisheries, and tourism. These are some of the most pristine coastal belts in the south of Sri Lanka, frequented by tourists throughout the year with a peak tourism season from December to March.
It is increasingly clear that a proper inquiry must be held into the sinking of the Iranian ship and response, as well as an environmental damage impact assessment. If responsible for environmental damage, the United States must pay reparations to Sri Lanka for harm caused to the fisheries’ livelihoods and the Tourist sector by the sinking of an unarmed Iranian ship in Sri Lanka’s maritime Exclusive Economic Zone. The new spiritual leader of Iran has stated that the US and Israel must pay reparations for the war they started.
The US is in the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans, and has no right to bring its environment-polluting war machine to the Indian Ocean. The US should return it war toys to the Atlantic Ocean and remove all its military bases from the Indian Ocean. So too are its NATO partners, the UK and France.
Peace Campaign needed
India, despite aspiring to lead the Global South, has failed to liberate the Indian Ocean from Euro-American neocolonialism and military bases, having fallen prey to Euro-American Imperialist Divide-and-Rule narratives and policies —fearing the Rise of China and the CIA’s “String of Pearls”.
Hence, it is increasingly clear that small Indian Ocean littoral states and islands need a people’s Peace Campaign to demand the closure of US-UK-French neocolonial military bases and to demilitarise and decolonise the Indian Ocean Region.
The US war machine uses the huge Diego Garcia military base on the occupied Chagos Islands, not far from the Maldive Islands and Sri Lanka to stage attacks in it war of aggression on Iran and to wage hybrid economic warfare on Rising Asian and Indian Ocean countries, particularly South and Southeast Asia.
Geoengineering and weather warfare in the Indian Ocean and the use of “Weather as a force Multiplier’ on emerging South and Southeast Asian countries to “Make the Economy Scream” like the Ditwah Twister storms that hit Sri Lanka and Aceh, Indonesia last December are apparent at this time. Staged Environmental disasters are reminiscent of ‘Operation Popeye’ during the Vietnam War which gave rise to the Environmental Modification Technologies Treaty or the ENMOD treaty.
Previously, the 2004 Christmas/Boxing Day Earthquake and the Indian Ocean Tsunami destroyed coastal areas in the same countries of the Indian Ocean World. A pattern of ‘plausibly deniable’ hybrid economic warfare against emerging South and Southeast Asian economies in the Indian Ocean is apparent, also targeting China’s Maritime Silk Road and Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) for global trade and connectivity.
US-Israeli Aggression Spreading in the Indian Ocean
Once upon a time, the Indian Ocean was called a ‘British Lake’ or Pond, when ‘Britannia Ruled the Waves’. Now increasingly, Israelis have set up the Chabad Lubovitch ‘Spider web’ across Sri Lanka, which is front and centre of the Indian Ocean on the world’s busiest trade, energy and submarine Data cable route. So too, Israeli settlements have targeted the Indian Ocean world’s tourist hotspots in environmentally vulnerable coastal areas and mountain tops– also to stage ‘climate disasters’. Meanwhile, Israeli surfers claim they ‘own the waves’ in Arugam Bay on the East Coast of Sri Lanka!
Protests outside the British Courts in London over the US-UK’s illegal Occupation of the Chagos Islands, where there is a huge military base, Diego Garcia, which is located near the Maldives and Sri Lanka. A US Submarine attacked the Iranian Frigate ISIS Dena, killing 87 sailors and causing environmental damage in Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone.
Although not an Indian Ocean country, France has claimed more than 10 per cent of the total Indian Ocean surface and a large portion of the seabed as its Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) under UNCLOS!! .[i]
France uses small islands it colonised centuries ago scattered in the Indian Ocean as military bases and to loot the region’s fisheries resources. France and Spain, with huge industrialised fisheries trawler fleets, along with Japan, Taiwan, and China, are the biggest Ocean Grabbers of the Indian Ocean fishery.
These industrialized Distant Water Fishing States deprive impoverished Indian Ocean littoral communities of their ocean resources, according to the Indian Ocean Tuna Commission (IOTC) Data. It is hence too that British, French and US military bases in the Indian Ocean should be shut down and the Indian Ocean decolonised to enable impoverished littoral communities to harvest their marine resources.
At this time, the US-Israeli war of aggression on Iran is spreading across the Indian Ocean World, which must be liberated from past and present US-UK-French military bases, occupation, and neocolonialism to end their exploitation of Indian Ocean fisheries and mineral resources.
The US, UK, French (NATO) war machine, which is highly environmentally polluting, must be expelled from the Indian Ocean and sent back to the Atlantic Ocean, where they belong. These imperialist and neocolonial countries have a terrible habit of waging war in other people’s lands and seas, causing massive environmental pollution.
Is it not time for the people of the Indian Ocean World, particularly small islands, to call for an end to US-UK-French neocolonial occupation, aggression and Hybrid Economic warfare against the Rise of Asian economies, particularly South and Southeast Asia, in what Singapore academic Kishore Mabubani termed ‘the Asian 21st Century’?
The Indian Ocean must be decolonised so that its rich resources may be sustainably harvested and used by Indian Ocean littoral countries and people, many of whom are dirt poor.
*Dr Darini Rajasingham-Senanayake is a social and medical anthropologist with expertise in international development and political-economic analysis. She was a member of the International Steering Group of the North-South Institute project: “Southern Perspectives on Reform of the International Aid Architecture”. [IDN-InDepthNews]
Please listen to this presentation and share: The Indian Ocean as a Zone of Peace, free of Militarization https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QqV44gItEQ4
[i] https://www.orfonline.org/expert-speak/india-and-france-in-the-indian-ocean