India has summoned a senior U.S. in New Delhi and condemned a U.S. military strike on a commercial tanker in the Gulf of Oman that killed three Indian sailors, the strongest diplomatic response New Delhi has directed at Washington since the Iran war began in February.
The three dead have been named as Aditya Sharma, Shivanand Chaurasiya, and Patnala Suresh. They were among 24 Indian crew members aboard the Palau-flagged MT Settebello when a U.S. MQ-9 Reaper drone fired precision munitions into the vessel’s engine room at 11:14 p.m. on June 9, approximately 20 nautical miles northeast of Sohar, Oman. Twenty-one crew were rescued. The three were initially reported missing. Their bodies have since been located and identified.
The regime’s justification is straightforward: the Settebello was carrying Iranian oil in violation of the blockade Washington imposed in April, and the crew “repeatedly failed to comply with directions from American forces.”
However, the ship’s manager says that is false.
Dubai-based IOS Marine FZE released a statement on Thursday directly contradicting CENTCOM’s account. The company said the Settebello “held no affiliation whatsoever with Iran or Iranian oil” and was engaged in legitimate commercial operations at the time. More critically, it disputed that any warnings were ever issued. “To the best of our knowledge and based on information available to us, no warning call, message or communication was ever successfully established with the vessel prior to the actions taken,” the company said. It has called for a full international investigation and stated it “unequivocally” holds the U.S. Navy responsible for the deaths.
That is a direct accusation. A U.S. combat drone destroyed a civilian vessel in international waters, killed three sailors, and the people responsible for that vessel say the regime’s stated justification, warnings issued and ignored, did not happen.
Independent analysts complicate the picture further. Tanker tracking firm TankerTrackers.com has previously identified the Settebello as having carried Iranian oil for at least five years, though it had not been sanctioned by the U.S. Treasury. Maritime intelligence firm Windward noted the vessel fit patterns associated with sanctioned Iranian oil trades. IOS Marine did not address those claims.
What is not in dispute: the Settebello is not the only one. Four days earlier, on June 8, a U.S. F/A-18 Super Hornet struck the MT Marivex in the same waters, also Palau-flagged, also carrying Indian crew. A crew member’s distress call, shared with BBC Verify by the Forward Seamen’s Union of India, described fire on board, the vessel sinking, a missile hole in the hull. On Thursday, CENTCOM disabled a third vessel, the Guinea-Bissau-flagged MT Jalveer, firing two Hellfire missiles into its engine room.
Three ships in four days. Eight total since the blockade began on April 13, in international waters, under a blockade no international body has authorised, in a war no Congress declared.
The International Maritime Organization has condemned the strike directly. Secretary-General Arsenio Dominguez said he "strongly condemned any act from any party that endangers the lives of seafarers," and the IMO confirmed it has now recorded 44 attacks on international shipping in and around the Strait of Hormuz since February 28, with 14 seafarer fatalities. The world's primary shipping authority is on record. Washington has not responded.
It took the deaths of Indian nationals to move New Delhi. India spent three and a half months declining to condemn the U.S.-Israeli assault on Iran, co-sponsoring a UN Security Council resolution targeting Tehran, and aligning itself with Washington. Three dead sailors, and the Modi regime issues a demarche. The families of Sharma, Chaurasiya, and Suresh are owed more than that. So is the truth of what happened on June 9.
