That is not a war crime. First, there is no way to know that a naval vessel is unarmed. Second, even if unarmed, it does not mean it has safe passage. Once it gets back to its base, it can load with munitions and then come and fight. Put it differently: if instead of a naval ship, you see an enemy tank, should you not shoot at it because it is unarmed?
Even if it isn't a war crime, every sailor in the world know what the US did and how US sailors treat shipwreck survivors, from the Caribbean to the Indian Ocean. Truly shameful.
That said, I will still help any distressed boat, whatever their nationality, because I'm better than them. Just, expect me to be rude and avoid talking to them.
That ship was involved in naval exercises at the invitation of the host navy, India.
That ship was unarmed. Nothing unusual there - that was the original plan for the joint navy drills. A large complement of the crew was A BRASS BAND!
The Indian's (and this has been formally confirmed since) communicated to the Americans that this was an UNARMED ship which was about to leave Indian territorial waters on its way home.
So the Americans KNEW where the ship was (they were told) and KNEW it was completely unarmed.
And they sunk it anyway, and refused to pick up any survivors.
Thats a crystal clear WAR CRIME. The kind which is writ large in western history books for 80 years, condemning the conduct of the Nazi Germany submarine units.
None of that changes that it was an Iranian warship.
Warships of nations involved in armed conflict are always valid targets for the adversary.
Otherwise it would also have been a bunch of war crimes for the Iranian ships destroyed at the pier by cruise missile or bombs.
India was not a party to the conflict so they can't vouch for the unarmedness of a warship on either side one way or another. But even if they could, unarmed warships are valid targets for the reason the other commenter pointed out (they can quickly become armed).
Nor does international law necessarily require a warship to personally pick up all survivors, and in fact gives warships a fair amount of leeway to consider their own security along with their own ability to execute a successful rescue and successfully berth the shipwrecked.
Modern submarines, while not exempt, tend to fall into that proviso more than other classes because they are not equipped to conduct surface rescue (unlike WWII-era submarines they don't even have a keel for surfaced stationkeeping), have no brig facilities, have no sickbay and very little other medical facilities.
Once it was clear that the Sri Lankan navy (the closest ships to the Dena's survivors) was responding, the responsibility of the U.S. to see to rescue had been accomplished.
The U.S. definition balances military necessity against humanity, which in this case is not looking good: no mitigating attempts to reduce the death toll – no warnings, no attempt to disable the ship – and since the ship was trying to get permission to dock in Sri Lanka or India at the time, it’s hard to justify a claim of military necessity for a ship which was either unarmed or very lightly armed and clearly posed absolutely no threat to the much larger and better equipped U.S. navy. It’s unlikely to ever see a formal trial but I think quite a few people will see it as if not an outright war-crime, at least a betrayal of military honor.
I was thinking more like the expectation we used to have that the police didn’t just start shouting in a surprise ambush. For example, the U.S. navy knew that the ship was unarmed and returning from an event hosted by the Indian government which the U.S. had also participated in, that it was attempting to dock rather than attack, and that even fully loaded it posed an insignificant threat, so there’s an argument that the Navy could have one of their thousands of aircraft to give them the opportunity to surrender or evacuate before the boat was sunk. We did that for actual Nazis, who posed far more of a peer-level threat than Iran does.
The ship posed the only plausible threat, not the sailors.
> there’s an argument that the Navy could have one of their thousands of aircraft to give them the opportunity to surrender or evacuate before the boat was sunk. We did that for actual Nazis
I think there is absolutey an argument that good decorum would have provided a nearby surface vessel to assist with rescue. But not being nice in a war isn't the same as a war crime. And expanding the notion of war criminality to cover even breaches of decorum fundamentally waters down a term that has already started being seen as meaningless because people want to make it apply to any act of war.
No, but the U.S. navy has more than a single submarine. Given the vast power differential and the fact that they knew the ship was unarmed having participated in the same International Fleet Review exercise, there’s an argument that, say, an aircraft radio message giving them an opportunity to surrender first.
The “shot across the bow” phrase comes from a relevant naval tradition, such as when the U.S. Navy captured ships from far more serious threats like Nazi Germany:
> Exactly this was one of the charges against Admiral Doenitz at Nuremberg.
Indeed, however despite being convicted of that and other charges, this particular charge was not factored into his sentence, precisely because British and U.S. submarines also engaged in the same practice during the conflict.
And that was with WW2-era submarines which were designed to operate mostly on the surface and could make provision for doing things like picking up downed aviators and engaging in "crash dives" to rapidly submerge.
Modern submarines are designed to operate mostly submerged and have very poor station-keeping while surfaced, and even lack the ability to crash dive (because you're supposed to be submerged long before you get into the danger zone and then stay submerged throughout).
It was proven in court that even the Nazi German submarines made good faith efforts to rescue drowning sailors, and they only stopped when one u-boat was sunk (or damaged?) by a US plane while it was rescuing US sailors (after which, the German navy gave out orders forbiding the practice).
> Everything I said in my previous 2 posts stands.
It was wrong before and still wrong though.
For example, you haven't explained why you feel that a torpedo for an Iranian warship in international waters is a war crime, but sinking Iranian warships at the pier in Iranian waters is not.
The U.S. did even less for shipwrecked survivors in the latter case than in the former. Why are bombs and cruise missiles to sink ships from destroyers 800 nm away not also war crimes in your mind?
Is it also a war crime when Ukraine sinks Russian navy ships at their piers with USVs or cruise missiles with no ability to recover survivors? (Hint: no, it's not)
I have explained why, multiple times. You just don't want to accept it (fine, this will be determined at Nuremberg 2,0, not by you or me, here)
The sub knew it was clear of any Iranian guns, for over 100 miles in every direction, once it had sunk the only (unarmed) Iranian asset within 100 miles of it. Thats not the same as being within (or close to) Iranian territory.
Hence, the lack of threat, as per the established laws of naval warfare, neccesitate some attempt at helping survivors. The sub was in the immediate vicinity of the ship. Not 800 miles away firing a cruise missile.
To still maintain that, even in that situation, there's still some theoretical threat means that you're effectively trying to say that in NO conceivable situation do the established laws of naval warfare apply, in practical terms. For anyone, anywhere, ever.
In any case, this is all an academic exercise. In this world order, no laws - international, military, or common decency - apply to the US or its chosen allies.
Justice will have to be served the old fashioned way.
This is a rare case of an HN discussion on international law where there is something approximating an RFC that we can just go consult on these issues --- it's the San Remo Manual, which is trivially Googlable, and consists of a series of numbered paragraphs. Cite the paragraphs that support the argument you're making about the unacceptability of sinking a flagged enemy warship simply because the attacker knows it to be unarmed.
Are you deliberately trying to misrepresent what I have said across multiple posts? The war crime was not the sinking of the ship.
That was a cowardly act (unarmed vessel), but not strictly a war crime.
The ACTUAL war crime was the immediate refusal to render any aid to the sunken sailors. How many times do I have to repeat that line? Shall I bold it for you? And the fact that the ship was ALONE and UNARMED removed any pretence that the US sub would have been in danger by doing so.
I repeatedly mention the Geneva Convention & the fact that the same principle is written into the official US naval doctrines (so its US law as well), and yet you're still barking up the wrong branch.
If you're going to refute my argument, then please refute my ACTUAL argument, and not the strawman version you've concocted.
> ACTUAL war crime was the immediate refusal to render any aid to the sunken sailors. How many times do I have to repeat that line?
Where possible. That restriction doesn't seem to have applied to submarines since WWII.
Repetition doesn't make right.
> ALONE and UNARMED
Doesn't change that it's a warship. Like, should warships from now on just say they aren't armed, then go off an engage in military operations and complain about war crimes afterwards?
I'll add this: the way you've argued this has taken me from being sceptical about this being a war crime to feeling confident it is not.
The guys on the Iranian warship also knew they were on a warship. I mean come on. What’s the expectation here. This isn’t tag on a kindergarten playground. People are gonna die.
Dönitz's blanket order that no submarine should ever pick up survivors is absolutely not equivilant to any individidual submarine deciding not to pick up survivors because {reasons}.
The first is a blanket order to ignore all survivors all the time,
the second is a specific case of not picking up survivors under a general umbrella of picking up survivors save for when there are other factors.
In this specific instance they can argue, should it ever go before an international tribunal, that they lacked room and that more applicable search and rescue was already en route.
I'm not arguing in defence of Hegseth et al. but I am pointing out that things are not nearly as clear cut and straighforward as you claim.
The Geneva Convention II hedges a lot wrt submarine warfare - few submarines have the capacity to take on many survivors .. they're already pressed for space.
You could ague they had an obligation to notify search and rescue ... at a time when the nearest search and rescue was already alerted and en route.
and scroll down to Failure to Rescue IRIS Dena’s Shipwrecked Crew
> Exactly this was one of the charges against Admiral Doenitz at Nuremberg.
A charge that didn't stick, a practice engaged in by both the British and U.S. submarines
In the aftermath of World War II, the issue of rescuing survivors following submarine attacks took center stage during the trial of Admiral Karl Dönitz before the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg.
After Allied attacks on a U-boat attempting to rescue survivors of an ocean liner, the RMS Laconia, Dönitz issued the Laconia Order, which instructed: “All attempts at rescuing members of ships that have been sunk, including attempts to pick up persons swimming, or to place them in lifeboats, or attempts to upright capsized boats, or to supply provisions or water are to cease.”
The court held that the order violated the 1936 London Protocol on submarine warfare, which required that the passengers and crew of merchant vessels be placed in safety before a warship could sink them.
Yet, because British and U.S. submarines engaged in the same practice during the conflict, it did not factor the breaches of the law of submarine warfare into Dönitz’s sentence.
Legally, there's much here that's hard to pin down, massive grey areas and a lot of jelly to nail to the wall.
Ethically - the US forces under Hegeseth are behaving like arseholes and absolutely skating a line, the same objective (taking out the ship) could have been achieved in a number of less odious ways.
They didn't have to pick them up. They could have surfaced (remember, it was KNOWN that there was no threat) and tossed out a few inflatable life rafts.
> They could have surfaced (remember, it was KNOWN that there was no threat)
It was by no means "KNOWN" that there was no threat. A modern submarine is inherently in a much more unsafe posture when surfaced, which is precisely why they never do that, especially when it's possible to encounter an enemy.
> tossed out a few inflatable life rafts.
Why do you think submarines randomly carry inflatable life rafts? If they had enough space for those they'd toss them overboard and load additional food stores instead.
Moreover, a surfaced submarine close enough to a floating group of survivors is actually dangerous to those survivors. It has a rotating screw at the back which can seriously injure or kill people and it's not like there's a deck trebuchet equipped to lob life rafts at a distance, even if it carried them.
> Legally, there's much here that's hard to pin down, massive grey areas and a lot of jelly to nail to the wall.
Similar to an earlier comment you made to me, what references do you have that say that GCII Article 18 is 100% not applicable to submarines? Or more broadly that support your assertion that "you've departed any recognizable modern law of naval warfare."
Declaring "my position is a fact" doesn't make it so. Wanting something to be doesn't make it so either.
Channel your indignation and anger into a more productive avenue, there's hardly a shortage of actual war crimes occuring these days to be pissed about.
Others have pointed out that the war crime is not picking up survivors. What shocks the conscience here regardless that sinking the ship itself may not be a war crime is the seemingly obvious reason this was done was target practice involving mostly innocent lives. The US would have had many opportunities to simply board and seize the ship. If there had been any resistance at that point that put US forces at risk then force may have some minimal justification for taking lives.
Honest question, is this required of belligerents? How is a submarine even meant to provide such aid?
It was a mean attack. But we seek to be continuing the trend of turning highly precedented and obvious tactics into war crimes, thereby making the term equate to war in general.
> Honest question, is this required of belligerents? How is a submarine even meant to provide such aid?
No, it is not. Otherwise the U.S. committed several more war crimes for each of the other Iranian navy ships that were sunk by bombs or cruise missiles rather than by submarine-launched torpedoes.
International law (including treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory) require belligerents to attempt to rescue survivors if possible without putting the rescuing ship at undue risk. ‘[a]fter each engagement, Parties to the conflict shall, without delay, take all possible measures to search for and collect the shipwrecked, wounded and sick, to protect them against pillage and ill-treatment, to ensure their adequate care, and to search for the dead and prevent their being despoiled’. (emphasis added for clarity)
> Otherwise the U.S. committed several more war crimes for each of the other Iranian navy ships that were sunk by bombs or cruise missiles rather than by submarine-launched torpedoes.
I am having difficulty parsing your reasoning here. What matters is were "all possible measures taken to search for and collect the shipwrecked", not the manner of the attack. You may be implying that bombs/cruise missiles left no possibilities but that isn't a certainty if there were US ships in the vicinity.
Regarding your provided reference to it being "difficult" for submarines to collect shipwrecked survivors - the treatment seems cursory and more germane to conflicts where there is more parity. In this situation what was the risk to the submarine? Exposing it's positions to the Iranians who had not other ships in the area (and per US assertions no other Navy at all)? Coming under attack from a missile launched from Iran while surfaced?
> > Otherwise the U.S. committed several more war crimes for each of the other Iranian navy ships that were sunk by bombs or cruise missiles rather than by submarine-launched torpedoes.
> I am having difficulty parsing your reasoning here. What matters is were "all possible measures taken to search for and collect the shipwrecked", not the manner of the attack.
Indeed. And modern submarines have nil ability to search for and safely collect the shipwrecked. Multiple submarines from at least 3 countries have fired torpedoes to sink enemy ships since WW2. None have ever stuck around to look for survivors, let alone surfaced to try to rescue them.
> You may be implying that bombs/cruise missiles left no possibilities but that isn't a certainty if there were US ships in the vicinity.
No, I'm pointing out the opposite: the U.S. does have assets that could have been sent from the Persian Gulf to execute a rescue operation for the Iranian sailors shipwrecked by their warship being attacked by bombs or cruise missiles.
If nothing else, a helo could "drop a life raft", as some of the other comments seem to think is easy for a submarine to do.
But no such attempt at this was made, and no one seems to have any issue with that (for obvious reasons... my point is that the same obvious reasons extend to the submarine attack).
> the treatment seems cursory and more germane to conflicts where there is more parity
Parity doesn't really factor in, it's not something you'll see in international law. You're not supposed to have to put yourself at risk to effect a rescue. The requirement to take all possible measures applies whether its two peers fighting or David and Goliath.
The fact that you think it's cursory just tells me you don't understand submarine operations, but that's OK, most don't.
> In this situation what was the risk to the submarine?
Conducting a surfaced rescue is inherently risky to the crew of a modern submarine. Unlike surface ships, there is no keel to improve station-keeping while surfaces. The hull is shaped for hydrodynamics, not for the ability to be navigated on foot by the crew. There are no davits to launch or recover boats or life rafts. There is no hanger deck or brig or sickbay or really any empty space to hold survivors. There are not extra crew onboard to guard survivors and thereby keep the submarine (and its nuclear reactor) safe.
Even aside from Mother Nature, there was an Iranian sister ship nearby who could have attacked the submarine had she surfaced (she wasn't attacked because she opted to stay behind in a neutral port rather than put to sea but it was the same port Dena had sailed from before her attack). And again, unlike during World War 2 there's no real provision to do a "crash dive" to quickly submerge (and that's even assuming the submarine captain is willing to kill the members of his crew that are topside in order to quickly submerge). A surfaced submarine is a sitting duck, militarily.
I know it may feel to you like Iran has no military assets but even a single helicopter with a lightweight torpedo (and Iran operates at least 8) would be enough to have put the submarine at serious risk of hull loss with the deaths of all crew. The Chinese have anti-ship ballistic missiles. Iran has ballistic missiles that can reach to Diego Garcia.
Iran also has submarines which may have been deployed to the area (even one of their "midget" submarines had deployed to India in 2014) and if present could easily have conducted a counterattack which the American submarine would have had difficulty detecting ahead of time, since sonar is fairly useless while surfaced.
No sane submarine captain from any country's navy operating nuclear-propelled attack submarines would have done anything different regarding survivors. A modern nuclear submarine is a glass cannon, avoiding counter-detection is basically its only means of defense, and even if that weren't the case they are not equipped to take on passengers, they have enough trouble handling their own crew, who have to share bunks because of the lack of space onboard.
> And modern submarines have nil ability to search for and safely collect the shipwrecked.
A definitive reference that was more conclusive on this point as well as your extensive further assertions would be helpful. I have no expertise in submarines and I apologize if it seemed otherwise (but I did stay in a Holiday Inn last night!) but you've not laid out your bona fides to be able to make these proclamations either.
> Parity doesn't really factor in, it's not something you'll see in international law. You're not supposed to have to put yourself at risk to effect a rescue.
Sure, I was commenting on the reference you provided being targeted to situations where there was more risk and not directly addressing a similar situation as to what occurred here.
> Conducting a surfaced rescue is inherently risky to the crew of a modern submarine.
You could argue there is risk to any vessel, not just submarines, using the examples you have provided later on yet GCII Article 18 still requires you to do it.
The best argument for there being no possibility for a war crime is one that focuses on the inability of the submarine to assist at all in a rescue. An ironclad example would be with a peace-time situation involving a ship of one's own navy that was in significant distress.
This is for discussion's sake - I don't really believe that there would actually be a war crime trial around this one incident even if it were a surface vessel that did the sinking.
The San Remo Manual will be on the first SERP of a Google search and consists of numbered paragraphs specifically to make it easy to cite. Which paragraph numbers support the position you're stating here?
Technically not my position - was pointing out the redirect other's had made. I however did that with the background of media reports identifying the the "double tap" missile strike by the US on a supposed drug boat in the Caribbean as a war crime [1].
Not being familiar with the San Remo manual, a quick review says it does not contradict the 2nd Geneva Convention but it does not seem to directly address shipwrecked survivors. My read of GCII Article 18 [2] seems to clearly make this a requirement however.
My focus was on the the inhumanity of torpedoing the ship given the situation. Are you implying you disagree with this?
> GCII Article 18 [2] seems to clearly make this a requirement however
Also not an expert. But my understanding is "all possible measures" and "whenever circumstances permit" have historically been taken to not apply to submarines. Largely because in WWII, we "ordered" a B-24 to attack a German U-boat who had "broadcast her position on open radio channels to all Allied powers nearby, and was joined by several other U-boats in the vicinity" following its "sinking of a British passenger ship" [1].
What do you think is supposed to happen when a warship is destroyed with a cruise missile? There are people on this thread arguing in a way that makes me think the answer is "you're not allowed to strike warships with cruise missiles". From what I've read, the practical obligation to survivors is met once the attacker is confident that some SAR team somewhere has been notified, which was the case here.
> What do you think is supposed to happen when a warship is destroyed with a cruise missile? There are people on this thread arguing in a way that makes me think the answer is "you're not allowed to strike warships with cruise missiles".
This thread has many tendrils. I'm not sure what this has to do with any of my replies as I've not said, nor implied that.
> From what I've read, the practical obligation to survivors is met once the attacker is confident that some SAR team somewhere has been notified, which was the case here.
Can you point to that in San Remo which you've referenced multiple times - or somewhere if appropriate? I cannot find sections that deal with requiring the rescue, or notification of the need for, of shipwrecked survivors in San Remo - perhaps I am not using the right terms.
What do you think the legalities of sinking a warship with a cruise missile should be? They can be fired from over 1000 miles away, and obviously they can't take on shipwrecked passengers.
> not sure why that would say they don't apply just to submarines though?
Because it isn't "possible" for modern submarines to assist with rescue. They're pathetically unstable on the surface. Vulnerable as hell to even drones. Don't have a deck to speak of where rescues could be held. And have a nuclear reactor inside–you can't take randos through the airlock.
The only "circumstances permit" place where a submarine might be able to help is if it's operating in friendly waters, with air support and naval support close by to ensure no e.g. drones make a run for it while it's on the surface. And even then, it would be a risky operation.
But why would what parties take from what happened with Laconia be limited to the attacking craft being submarines? The exact same situation could have happened with attacking surface ships instead of U-boats. The takeaway seems to be that we can't trust our enemies not to attack us while performing rescues so we don't have to perform them.
San Remo which you referenced in another reply doesn't seem to go into what is required of combatants around rescues but it does say that rescuers can't be attacked [1]. That would make the Laconia argument be that I can't be committing a war crime by not rescuing survivors because I presume that I am at risk of having a war crime being committed against me.
As someone who disdains hyperbolic, motivated framings of everything in the news cycle, I normally don't like to use words like that. But, it was interesting to see the news discuss the "first time since world war two" component of this event, that by WWII standards, would have been seen as a cowardly violation of the rules of war.
The were in allied water, on a regularly scheduled drill, unarmed.
“failing to do everything possible to rescue those aboard is certainly a war crime,” as the Second Geneva Convention requires militaries to take all possible measures to search for and collect the shipwrecked, wounded, and sick.
This is the kind of thing that every western ( or “rich”
) government should have mandated years ago.
The best time was years ago, the second best time…
We see the results of initiatives like this in BC, Canada.
About 10 years ago they passed a law that when any government building is getting a renovation of any kind, public EV chargers must be built in the parking lot.
The result is that every single town without exception has EV chargers now. The future is coming, despite some doing their best to slow it down.
> This is the kind of thing that every western ( or “rich” ) government should have mandated years ago.
If it's cost effective there's no need to mandate it.
If it's not cost effective but you want it anyway, you can explicitly subsidize it instead of mandating it.
Does South Korea do mandated parking minimums like I hear is common here in the US? That would tell whether this is a tax on business property in general, or a tax on driving / personal mobility specifically.
Should we explicitly subsidize the kitchen equipment restaurants need in order to comply with food-safety regulations instead of mandating it? How about the mandatory sinks in the bathrooms of businesses (or even the mandatory toilets) - subsidize those instead of mandating them e.g. through OSHA?
> If it's cost effective there's no need to mandate it.
You should see how hard PG&E is working to prevent commercial and multifamily buildings from going solar. If the legislature voted to force PG&E to get out of the way, to allow property owners to do obviously cost-effective upgrades to their own properties, plenty of people would call it a “mandate”
Thinking about it from an individual (not business) point of view, the upfront capital won’t be repaid for 10-years or more and does little to change the value of the lot. The lot value is probably most dictated by location and capacity. Solar does nothing to affect location, and may even harm capacity. Parking lot customers might choose a lot of its shaded, but ultimately it’s a captive market due to location.
If I owned the lot, I could take on no-risk (which may be why the lot was purchased to begin with), or take on a 6-figure investment that could bankrupt me if the demand for the lot vanished. (I suppose in that case you’d at least be making money on selling power back to the grid.)
Electric utilities are "natural monopolies" that get to monopolize territory in exchange for being well regulated. It's preferable to having 3, 4, 5 utility poles stuck at the same corner all running wire for competitors. But it means you don't have market conditions driving optimization between competitors.
Moreover electric transmission and distribution gains from limiting solar investment and there's a history of utilities being in tension with solar power and lobbying against it. Solar skips the power lines and utilities need people to need power lines.
> If it's not cost effective but you want it anyway, you can explicitly subsidize it instead of mandating it.
Or, as happened in actual reality, you tell the owners they have to put it in place. Imagine that - the two weirdly specific things you came up with aren’t actually the only two options. Who would’ve thunk.
Even if no more energy infrastructure is destroyed from the moment of this post, the Iran war will do more to speed this up than decades of science, I think.
If your debts are also denominated in USD, their value will be fixed relative to your cash assets. This assumes a fixed rate, of course, but a 30 year fixed is common in the US and makes up a substantial portion of most folks’ debt.
What percent of dollars are tied up in in-flight oil transactions? And I suppose also in accounts that will be used for oil transactions in the planned future? That’s the mechanism for that supporting the value of the dollar, right, like, increased dollar demand via being used for oil market transactions?
The point is that the Petrodollar system requires countries to buy US treasuries to be able to buy oil. That is what makes borrowing cheap for the US, and what keeps the dollar demand up.
I'm not clear on how the Petrodollar system actually works.
If oil is sold in dollars, that only has to affect dollar demand for the time it takes to transit through some other currency to dollars to oil. So however long that takes to settle.
Where do the additional demand components come from? Why do countries have to buy US treasuries to be able to buy oil? Don't they just have to use dollars for the transaction?
We just got rooftop solar in Canada. Our meter was old and had to be upgraded to bidirectional.
We were warned if we turned on the system before the meter upgrade the old meter would sum together power coming from the grid and power going into it from our solar and we would be billed for the combined.
So with some old meters you don’t want to put power into the grid.
With rooftop solar and an EV I’m a lot less dependent on China for the next 30 years than everyone around me is on the Middle East daily for gas to drive and natural gas for heat.
War crimes every day.
https://asiatimes.com/2026/03/trump-us-navy-sank-unarmed-ira...
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