US pressing Sri Lanka not to repatriate Iranian crew and survivors from sunken ship, memo says
Posted on March 6th, 2026
Courtesy The Straits Times
Sri Lankan navy personnel rescuing Iranian sailors from the IRIS Dena on March 4, after it was torpedoed by the US military.
Summary
- The US urged Sri Lanka not to repatriate survivors from the sunken IRIS Dena and the crew of the IRIS Booshehr.
- A US submarine sank the Iranian warship IRIS Dena off Sri Lanka, marking the first such US action since WWII.
- Sri Lanka is holding the IRIS Booshehr and its crew, with the US discouraging their use for Iranian propaganda.
WASHINGTON – The United States is pressing Sri Lanka’s government not to repatriate the survivors from the Iranian warship it sank this week, as well as the crew of a second Iranian ship that is in Sri Lankan custody, according to an internal State Department cable seen by Reuters on March 6.
sank the IRIS Dena warship in the Indian Ocean about 19 nautical miles off Sri Lanka’s southern port city of Galle on March 4, killing dozens of sailors and dramatically widening Washington’s pursuit of the Iranian navy.
On March 5, Sri Lanka began offloading 208 crew members from a second Iranian ship, the naval auxiliary vessel IRIS Booshehr, which had found itself stranded in Sri Lanka’s exclusive economic zone but outside its maritime boundary.
President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said his island nation had a humanitarian responsibility” to take in the crew.
The torpedoing of the Dena – which US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth described as quiet death” – was the first such action by the United States since World War II and a clear sign of the Iran conflict’s widening geographic scope.
The internal State Department cable – which was dated March 6 and has not been previously reported – said Ms Jayne Howell, the charge d’affaires at the US embassy in Colombo, had emphasised to Sri Lanka’s government that neither the Booshehr crew nor the 32 Dena survivors should be repatriated to Iran.
It said Sri Lankan authorities should minimise Iranian attempts to use the detainees for propaganda”.