Iran has asked India to intervene at the highest level to get food, water and medicine to the crews of around 20 empty Iranian vessels stranded off Galle, on the grounds that Indian nationals are among those aboard, the Island reported on Wednesday.
The Iranian Embassy in Colombo has asked the Indian High Commission what New Delhi intends to do, the paper’s sources said. The outcome of the Iran–India talks is not known, and the same sources said India may not put its weight behind the Iranian effort.
This is the first time India has entered a story that has until now been a three-cornered one between Tehran, Colombo and Washington.
What is new here
The vessels unloaded crude some two months ago and are now empty, anchored just outside Sri Lanka’s 12-nautical-mile territorial waters but inside its Exclusive Economic Zone. The United States has issued a global warning against supplying them with food, water, medicine or other services, which is why Sri Lankan service providers stopped resupplying them rather than risk secondary sanctions.
Two details in the filing had not been reported before:
- The crews are not only Iranian. There are Indian and Bangladeshi nationals aboard. That is the basis of Iran’s approach to New Delhi, and it gives India a standing in the matter it did not previously have.
- India is in the same bind as Sri Lanka. The paper’s sources describe both governments as caught by the US warning, with India unable to ignore the plight of Indian crew members in what it regards as its own maritime neighbourhood.
The Sri Lankan government “remains tight-lipped,” the Island reports, and says its own efforts to get a response from the relevant authorities “were in vain.”
The legal argument, and the government’s answer to a different question
Iranian Ambassador Dr. Alireza Delkhosh has argued that Sri Lanka cannot refuse the vessels’ needs, citing Article 98 of the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea together with the SOLAS and SAR conventions, and has said the countries concerned have responsibilities under international law.
The force of that argument turns on a distinction worth setting out, because the government’s public position has addressed a different point.
When Foreign Minister Vijitha Herath briefed the Cabinet media conference on 8 September, he placed 47 vessels in international waters more than 24 nautical miles out and said plainly: “They are not in our waters.” Delkhosh does not dispute that. His claim is about the EEZ, not territorial waters — and the two are different zones, the first reaching up to 200 nautical miles and the second ending at 12. A vessel can be outside Sri Lanka’s territorial sea and inside its EEZ at the same time, which is exactly what the Island describes.
So the dispute is not about where the ships are. It is about whether presence in the EEZ creates a duty to provision them. No filing reports a Sri Lankan legal response to that argument, from the Foreign Ministry, the Attorney General or any other authority.
Parliament: the same MP, the second time
SLMC leader Rauff Hakeem criticised the NPP government in Parliament for failing to assist the vessels, alleging it was “simply carrying out dictates of the US” and attacking Herath’s handling of the matter.
Hakeem has raised Iranian shipping in the House before. On 11 September he urged the government to permit a crew change on an Iranian ship inside Sri Lankan waters — a request Deputy Minister Arun Hemachandra said would be handled through diplomatic and defence channels. On that occasion the government agreed to what he asked. The Island does not report a government reply to this intervention.
A casualty figure that does not match Iran’s own account
The filing recalls the sinking that frames this standoff: the US Navy torpedoed an unarmed Iranian frigate returning from India on 4 March 2026, about 19 nautical miles off Galle, in what the Island describes as an “unprovoked attack” that “killed nearly 100 Iranians.” The characterisation is the paper’s own.
The figure sits below Iran’s own. Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi, in a call with Herath reported by this newsroom, said of the IRIS Dena that “only about 30 of some 180 crew survived” — which implies roughly 150 dead, not nearly 100. Sri Lanka’s Deputy Minister of Defence confirmed in April that a US submarine sank the vessel, and 240 Iranian sailors in total left Sri Lanka on a Turkish charter once the rescue and repatriation closed. Readers should treat the lower figure with caution; neither account has been independently verified by this desk.
The “returning from India” detail does check out against the record. Delkhosh has previously said the ships were invited to Colombo by the Commander of the Sri Lanka Navy after taking part in the International Fleet Review and MILAN 2026 exercises in India in late February, and that all three were unarmed in keeping with the protocols for such events. India’s connection to this thread is therefore older than this week’s appeal.
Not reported
The Island’s account rests on unnamed “sources familiar with the issue,” and no other verified newsroom had filed on the Indian approach at the time of writing. The Daily Mirror’s most recent filing on the stranded vessels is dated 8 October and predates it.
The report does not say when Iran approached New Delhi, through which channel, or at what level “the highest level” means. It gives no count of the Indian or Bangladeshi crew, no current condition assessment for any vessel, and no indication of how long the crews’ remaining provisions will last. It does not say whether India has replied, whether the United States has been told of the approach, or whether Colombo was informed.
It also does not report whether the Sri Lanka Navy has made any welfare check on the vessels, or whether the humanitarian concerns the Foreign Ministry acknowledged in early October have produced any arrangement since.
