Diplomatic engagements between S. Jaishankar and Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, which followed India’s successful facilitation of the release of Indian merchant vessels earlier held in the Strait of Hormuz, appear to have culminated in a coordinated movement of Iranian naval personnel and civilians from Kochi, even as nearly one hundred sailors attached to the Iranian naval vessel IRIS Lavan quietly departed from the city on Friday evening aboard a chartered aircraft.
The sailors, who had been stationed aboard the vessel since it docked at the port on March 4, were transported from the city to the Cochin International Airport, from where the chartered flight reportedly departed around 7 pm, carrying the naval personnel along with several Iranian nationals who had earlier arrived from Colombo. While the majority of the crew are learnt to have left the country, a smaller contingent reportedly remained aboard the vessel to ensure its operational maintenance.
The aircraft, according to reports, was bound for Armenia, from where the sailors and accompanying passengers are expected to proceed onward to Iran by road. Sources also indicated that the flight was carrying the bodies of Iranian naval personnel who were killed when another Iranian warship, IRIS Dena, was allegedly torpedoed and sunk by a United States submarine near the maritime approaches of Sri Lanka on March 4, an attack that reportedly claimed the lives of 87 sailors.
The docking of IRIS Lavan in Kochi had itself followed an “urgent” request from Tehran citing technical complications aboard the Hengam-class landing vessel, which had been commissioned in the 1980s and carried a crew complement of 183 sailors.
The vessel’s conspicuous presence in the port city, at a moment when international scrutiny had intensified over the expanding confrontation between the United States, Israel and Iran, had inevitably attracted considerable public and media attention.