A US submarine attack has sent an Iranian frigate to the bottom of the Indian Ocean — and now a prominent Indian strategic thinker is asking whether shared military intelligence may have made it possible.
The IRIS Dena, an Iranian Moudge-class warship, sank in international waters off Sri Lanka’s coast. The strike was reportedly attributed to a US submarine strike. Iran has firmly denied the ship was carrying any weapons.
When information becomes ammunition
However, Geo-strategist Brahma Chellaney, professor emeritus of Strategic Studies at New Delhi’s Centre for Policy Research, has raised a pertinent question.
He noted that India and the US share sensitive maritime data under two key bilateral defence pacts: COMCASA and LEMOA.
COMCASA was signed in 2018. It allows the US to give India access to encrypted communication systems for secure, real-time data exchange between the two militaries.
LEMOA, meanwhile, governs the reciprocal exchange of logistics, supplies and services between Indian and American forces.
Chellaney told a section of the media that if a US attack submarine used data shared under these agreements to locate and destroy an Iranian frigate that had just left an Indian port, it would represent a fundamental breach of the defence partnership.
The timing has a context. We may recall that the IRIS Dena had been participating in India’s MILAN-2026 multilateral naval exercise at Visakhapatnam.
Chellaney reportedly said the Iranian claim that the ship carried no weapons was not implausible. Naval exercises such as MILAN typically focused on camaraderie and collaboration, he said, and visiting warships did not usually carry a full combat load unless a live-fire drill was specifically scheduled.
He added that ships participating in MILAN were required to remain in a “safe” configuration during the harbour phase. It included public tours, diplomatic events and a fleet review. Even during the sea phase, he said, ammunition was tightly controlled and limited to what specific drills required.
Stark imbalance
If the Dena departed Vizag in such a restricted configuration, Chellaney said, it would represent a stark imbalance, a lightly-armed cooperative exercise participant hunted and destroyed by the world’s most advanced undersea warfare platform.
Iran has squarely blamed the US. Ayatollah Dr Abdul Majeed Hakeemelahi, the representative of Iran’s supreme leader in India, told PTI that the attack violated international law as the ship carried no weapons of any kind. He said the sailors had come to India at the Indian Navy’s own invitation.
Chellaney put the military mismatch in stark terms. A Moudge-class frigate, even fully armed, would be no contest for a US nuclear-powered attack submarine. But if the vessel carried little or no munitions — as a peace protocol exercise would require — he said the strike looked less like combat and more like a premeditated execution.
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