Sri Lanka has formally taken control of the Iranian naval vessel IRINS Bushehr and its 208 crew members, just a day after a US submarine torpedoed and sank another Iranian warship, IRIS Dena, off the island’s southern coast.

President Anura Kumara Dissanayake said the Bushehr reported engine trouble and requested permission to enter a Sri Lankan port on 4–5 March, as it struggled to return home through waters now turned into a war zone by the US–Israeli campaign against Iran. The ship, like the sunken Dena, had just taken part in India’s International Fleet Review and the MILAN 2026 naval exercise.

In a nationally televised address, Dissanayake announced that Sri Lanka, as a neutral state, would act strictly under international law, including the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, and had decided to “take the crew and vessel under our care.” Navy ships have already offloaded 208 officers, cadets and sailors to Colombo, while a mixed Sri Lankan–Iranian skeleton crew will later sail the Bushehr to the more remote port of Trincomalee to avoid disrupting commercial traffic and spiking insurance rates at Colombo, the country’s main harbour.

Analysts note this appears to be the first internment of a warship by a neutral country since World War II – a dramatic reminder of how the US–Iran war is spilling into the Indian Ocean and forcing smaller states into uncomfortable choices.

Colombo insists it is “not taking sides,” casting its move as a humanitarian operation to save lives after the deadly US torpedoing of Dena. But as Iran fumes and Washington watches closely, Sri Lanka has suddenly become a frontline test of what neutrality really means in a 21st‑century great‑power war.