New Delhi:Days after a United States submarine sank an Iranian frigate in the Indian Ocean off Sri Lanka's coast, External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar has explained India's decision to grant docking permission to another Iranian naval vessel, pointing to the longstanding presence of foreign military facilities in the region as part of the "reality of the Indian Ocean".

Speaking at the 2026 Raisinia Dialogue in New Delhi, Jaishankar outlined the sequence of events involving the Iranian ships. 

"Here's the situation. We got a message from the Iranian side that one of the ships, which presumably was closest to our borders at that point of time, wanted to come into our port. They were reporting that they were having problems.

On the 1st March, we said you can come in and it took them a few days to sail in and then they docked in Kochi. There were a lot of young cadets. When the ships had set out and when they came here, the situation was totally different," Jaishankar said. 

"They were coming in for a fleet review, and then they got in a way caught on the wrong side of events," he added. 

The comments come in the context of three Iranian naval vessels that found themselves at the centre of the escalating war between Iran, the United States, and Israel in the first week of March. 

The ships -- IRIS Dena, IRIS Lavan, and IRIS Bushehr -- had been operating in the Indian Ocean and had participated in the International Fleet Review and MILAN 2026 exercises hosted by the Indian Navy in Visakhapatnam earlier in February.

Source:Ndtv