‘Approached from a point of humanity,’ Jaishankar on why India let Iran warship dock in Kochi

Indian External Affairs Minister S. Jaishankar said this after the US sank another Iranian Navy ship off the coast of neighboring Sri Lanka on Saturday, March 7, 2026.

Israel-Iran war, highlights of March 7, 2026

In his first comments on the US sinking of another Iranian Navy ship in the Indian Ocean, Mr Jaishankar said he allowed India to dock at Kochi while approaching “from the perspective of humanity”.

A US submarine torpedoed an Iranian warship on Wednesday, March 4, 2026 IRIS Dena83 people lost their lives on the ship that sank off the coast of Sri Lanka. This brought the West Asian conflict closer to India. The Indian government faced harsh criticism for its “silence” on the attack.

Another Iranian warship IRIS LavanIt docked in Kochi on Wednesday, March 4, 2026, upon Tehran’s urgent request, Indian government sources said. Both the fleets were leaving from the International Fleet Review in Visakhapatnam.

“When [Iranian] the ships had sailed and when they came here the situation was completely different,” Mr. Jaishankar said at the annual Raisina Dialogue event. IRIS Lavan and two other ships “were coming in for a fleet inspection and then they just kind of got caught on the wrong side of things,” he said.

“I think we really approached it from a human perspective, other than the legal issues,” he said. “I think we did the right thing.”

Pointing to discussions on social media about the incident, the Minister called on people to “understand the truth of the Indian Ocean”.

According to the Indian Navy, search and rescue operations were initiated after a distress call from IRIS Dena was received in Colombo in the early hours of Wednesday, March 4, 2026. At the time of the sinking, the ship was operating in the SAR region under Sri Lankan responsibility, approximately 20 nautical miles west of Galle.

US President Donald Trump said that one of the aims of the war he and Israel launched against the Islamic Republic a week ago was to destroy the Iranian Navy.