Officials in New Delhi say that an Iranian warship that was sunk by a U.S. submarine near Sri Lanka had participated in naval exercises hosted by India before heading out into international waters in the Indian Ocean on its way home.
It’s always a bit of a fuzzy line when it comes to submarine warfare, especially in modern times. A submarine on the surface is so vulnerable that in most military contexts, it would be suicidal to surface in a combat zone. At the same time, a military ship is a completely legitimate target, even if it’s defenceless. However, this wasn’t exactly a “combat zone”, since it was a ship with no escorts known to be defenceless, and very far from any friendly forces capable of assisting it or attacking the submarine.
The rules and customs of war at sea definitively state that you have to offer aid to the crew of a ship you sink. They didn’t do that, they just left them for dead. You could argue that a submarine doesn’t have the capability to render aid, given the aforementioned necessity of staying submerged, but there was another option. They could have stayed at periscope depth (they were already at periscope depth in order to film the heckin epic sinking of a defenceless ship), radioed them with an order to stop and informed them that they had 10 minutes to abandon ship before they were sunk, and then torpedoed them. This would have satisfied the rules and customs of war, and still have gotten them their torpedo video, while not endangering the sub (especially since Iran had no way to hit it back).
In short, I’ve definitely come around to the position that this was a war crime, but I would argue that it is only so because they either didn’t render aid when they could have, or because they didn’t give warning (given that they would argue that they couldn’t render aid) when they could have. Don’t take explanation of the nuance of the situation as sympathy fot the americans, if there was a button that would kill every american service member i would press it without hesitation.
It’s always a bit of a fuzzy line when it comes to submarine warfare, especially in modern times. A submarine on the surface is so vulnerable that in most military contexts, it would be suicidal to surface in a combat zone. At the same time, a military ship is a completely legitimate target, even if it’s defenceless. However, this wasn’t exactly a “combat zone”, since it was a ship with no escorts known to be defenceless, and very far from any friendly forces capable of assisting it or attacking the submarine.
The rules and customs of war at sea definitively state that you have to offer aid to the crew of a ship you sink. They didn’t do that, they just left them for dead. You could argue that a submarine doesn’t have the capability to render aid, given the aforementioned necessity of staying submerged, but there was another option. They could have stayed at periscope depth (they were already at periscope depth in order to film the heckin epic sinking of a defenceless ship), radioed them with an order to stop and informed them that they had 10 minutes to abandon ship before they were sunk, and then torpedoed them. This would have satisfied the rules and customs of war, and still have gotten them their torpedo video, while not endangering the sub (especially since Iran had no way to hit it back).
In short, I’ve definitely come around to the position that this was a war crime, but I would argue that it is only so because they either didn’t render aid when they could have, or because they didn’t give warning (given that they would argue that they couldn’t render aid) when they could have. Don’t take explanation of the nuance of the situation as sympathy fot the americans, if there was a button that would kill every american service member i would press it without hesitation.