The Foreign Ministry says the government is monitoring the cluster of Iranian oil tankers anchored near Sri Lanka’s Exclusive Economic Zone, its first substantive public comment on a build-up that has been visible off the southern coast for weeks.
Media Director General Thushara Rodrigo said the vessels are being watched, but stressed that because they sit outside Sri Lanka’s sovereign territory the country bears no responsibility for them and is providing them with no facilities, Ada Derana reported.
A reversal of position
The statement marks a shift. When LankaNewz reported the anchorage on August 26, the Ports Ministry had said it was not aware of the accumulation and the Foreign Ministry had declined to comment. No verified Sri Lankan newsroom had published its own account of the cluster at that point.
What the trackers now count
Citing the vessel-monitoring service TankerTrackers, Ada Derana put the total at nearly 20 Iranian tankers near the EEZ, of which around 13 are Iranian-flagged and the remainder are sanction-evading vessels of the so-called “shadow fleet”. The ships are carrying no fuel.
Those figures are consistent with the split reported three days earlier, when at least 13 Iranian tankers and around 20 vessels linked to Iranian state entities were counted at different boundaries. All are in ballast, unable to sail home because of the United States naval blockade of Iranian ports.
The risk Colombo is watching
Ada Derana said TankerTrackers has flagged the risk of attacks on the anchored vessels, citing the sinking of the IRIS Dena by a US submarine roughly 19 nautical miles off the Sri Lankan coast. Sri Lanka’s Deputy Minister of Defence confirmed that sinking in April; Ada Derana places the incident in March.
The service noted that under international law the United States may not attack vessels inside the territorial waters of a neutral country, which extend 12 nautical miles from the coast. The tankers are anchored beyond that line, in the belt where the Navy has little authority to intervene and where the legal protection against attack does not reach either.
Ada Derana is the only verified newsroom LankaNewz tracks to have carried the Foreign Ministry’s statement at the time of filing.
