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Iran has issued a warning to the United States, suggesting grave repercussions for the Pentagon sinking an Iranian warship off the coast of Sri Lanka with a torpedo.
“The U.S. has perpetrated an atrocity at sea, 2,000 miles away from Iran’s shores,” said Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi Thursday morning. “Mark my words: The U.S. will come to bitterly regret [the] precedent it has set.”
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Araghch said the Iranian frigate IRIS Dena was “a guest of India’s navy” and roughly 130 sailors were “struck in international waters without warning.” IRIS stands for Islamic Republic of Iran Ship and serves as an identifier of Iranian naval vessels.
The warship had taken part in a naval exercise in the Bay of Bengal.
According to Sri Lankan officials, over 80 Iranian sailors died, more than 30 are in hospital, and the rest remain unaccounted for. Search-and-rescue efforts are ongoing.
Sri Lanka’s Minister of Health Nalinda Jayatissa reportedly told parliament Thursday that another Iranian vessel is sailing close to Sri Lanka’s territorial waters. “We are making necessary interventions to resolve this issue, restrict the threat to lives and to ensure regional security,” he said.
The torpedo incident has been heralded as a show of U.S. military might by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
“An American submarine sank an Iranian warship that thought it was safe in international waters,” he told reporters at the Pentagon on Wednesday. “Instead, it was sunk by a torpedo. Quiet death.”
Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Dan Caine referred to the operation as “an incredible demonstration of America’s global reach” and noted that it’s the first time an American torpedo has sunk a ship since World War II.
“To hunt, find and kill an out-of-area deployer is something that only the United States can do at this type of scale,” he said.
The warship is one of over 20 Iranian ships “struck or sunk to the bottom of the ocean” by…
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