A U.S. Navy submarine has sunk an Iranian warship, the Dena, operating in the Indian Ocean near Sri Lanka. The ship had a complement of approximately 180 sailors.
War is hell, especially for sailors stuck on sinking ships. Young conscripts with no great love for their regime likely drowned alongside regime fanatics in this attack. War Secretary Pete Hegseth did not need to add his “quiet death” gloat in announcing the strike on Wednesday. For some of those conscripts, their death was both agonizingly loud and perhaps also slow.
Still, this military action serves a dual U.S. strategic interest. It helps to destroy the Islamic Republic of Iran’s military power, and it provides a much-needed bolstering of deterrence against China.
There are many questions as to what strategy the Trump administration is pursuing in Iran and what outcome its military campaign will produce. In the immediate term, however, the U.S. military has an obligation to follow orders in dismantling the Iranian regime’s ability and will to resist. The Dena could have moved to support Iranian efforts to close the Strait of Hormuz trade chokepoint. It could have created havoc against civilian cargo traffic in the Indian Ocean. It could have done any number of things at short notice to undermine U.S. security and interests. Its captain could also have surrendered. This sinking was justified.
Yet there is an additive strategic benefit to this first sinking of an enemy warship by a U.S. submarine since World War II. Namely, reminding China that the U.S. military has global reach.
This deterrence is crucially important as the United States continues to expend air defense munitions against Iranian ballistic missiles and drones. Those munitions, which might make the difference in any future war with China over Taiwan, were already in very short supply before this war began. And China has a great many far more advanced missiles than Iran. Contrary to the claims of some, U.S. air defense munitions cannot simply be reconstituted by bigger defense orders or innovation.
But by sinking an Iranian vessel that was apparently unaware it was even being followed, the U.S. reminds China of its continued dominance in undersea warfare. Communist Party Chairman Xi Jinping and his People’s Liberation Army know that the undersea domain is one of the few areas where the U.S. retains a generational advantage over China. It is for that reason that they so prize Russian efforts to improve the PLA’s anti-submarine warfare capabilities.
The strike video from the submarine’s periscope psychologically reinforces these military understandings. It shows a detonation below the Iranian vessel’s stern. This stern versus keel “back breaker” hit was likely because the Mark-48 torpedo’s sonar was set to passive homing mode, relying on the noise from the Dena’s propellers to direct it rather than its own active sonar. Again, this further indicates the Iranians had no idea they were being stalked.
TRUMP’S SUPERCILIOUS CHARACTER DOESN’T EXCUSE STARMER’S STRATEGIC CONSTIPATION
In short, this action further depletes Iran’s naval power and reminds other Iranian naval vessels that they have no safe quarter. And it quietly suggests to Xi that he might want to think twice before sending ferries loaded with troops and tanks across the Taiwan Strait.
But let us also hope that the Iranian sailors died in the explosion rather than through suffocation born of water in their lungs.