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Trump Demands Role in Picking Iran's Next Supreme Leader as US Submarine Sinks Iranian Warship in the Indian Ocean

Eighty-seven Iranian sailors are dead after a US submarine torpedoed the frigate IRIS Dena near Sri Lanka - the first submarine sinking since World War II. Hours later, Trump told Axios he "must be involved" in choosing who governs Iran next. Day 6 of the war has a new name: regime change.

A naval frigate underway at sea. The IRIS Dena was returning from India's MILAN 2026 exercises when a US submarine intercepted it. (Unsplash)

The torpedo hit the IRIS Dena somewhere in the deep blue of the Indian Ocean, southwest of Sri Lanka, on Wednesday afternoon local time. The Iranian frigate - fresh from 10 days of joint naval drills with 74 countries, including the United States itself - broke apart fast. Sri Lanka's navy responded to a distress signal but found nothing when it arrived: just oil slicks and sailors floating in warm water.

Eighty-seven bodies were recovered. Thirty-two sailors were rescued and taken to a hospital in the coastal town of Galle. Iran's foreign minister says the ship was carrying "almost 130" crew. The math is brutal.

The sinking of the IRIS Dena - carried out by a US submarine, confirmed on video released by the Department of Defense - is the first time a submarine has torpedoed a warship since World War II. [AP News] It is also one data point in a rapidly expanding conflict that, by Thursday night, had claimed at least 1,230 lives in Iran, spread active hostilities to 14 countries, closed the Strait of Hormuz and drew Trump into declaring he wants a seat at the table when Iran picks its next supreme leader.

This is Day 6. No one knows what Day 60 looks like.

The Ship That Came From India

The IRIS Dena did not come from an act of provocation. It came from Visakhapatnam.

From February 15 to 25, the Iranian Navy frigate participated in India's International Fleet Review and the multilateral MILAN 2026 naval exercise in the Indian port city. Seventy-four countries attended. India's navy posted images of the IRIS Dena sailing with the fleet on February 17. Crew members posed on deck with the Iranian flag. The United States also sent ships to the same exercise.

After the drills ended, the IRIS Dena set course for home. It was in international waters off the southwest coast of Sri Lanka when the torpedo hit.

"The IRIS Dena had been a guest of India's navy. The US has ignored India's sensitivities." - Kanwal Sibal, former Indian Foreign Secretary

India's Ministry of Defense confirmed the ship's participation in MILAN 2026 but made no official statement about its destruction. The silence became its own diplomatic statement - and opposition leaders were quick to fill it.

"The conflict has reached our backyard, with an Iranian warship sunk in the Indian Ocean," said opposition leader Rahul Gandhi in a post on X. "Yet the Prime Minister has said nothing." [AP News]

India has long maintained careful diplomatic balance between Washington and Tehran. That balance is now under severe stress. New Delhi views the Indian Ocean as its strategic backyard - it patrols it, exercises in it, hosts fleets from dozens of nations. The US submarine attack occurred in those waters without Indian consent or consultation. The political fallout is still developing.

For Iran, the optics were deliberately devastating. US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth called the IRIS Dena a "prize ship" and said its sinking illustrated how the US-Israel military operation is "stretching beyond its borders." Trump has stated openly that one key objective of the war is to destroy Iran's navy entirely.

Sri Lanka's navy responded to the IRIS Dena distress signal but found only oil and floating survivors. (Unsplash)

A Second Iranian Ship - Seized Without a Shot

While the world processed the IRIS Dena sinking, a second Iranian warship quietly entered Sri Lanka's exclusive economic zone. The IRIS Bushehr did not get torpedoed. Instead, it got escorted.

Sri Lankan President Anura Kumara Dissanayake announced Thursday that Sri Lankan navy boats had begun transferring 208 Iranian sailors from the IRIS Bushehr to the port at Colombo. The warship itself was being taken to a port in eastern Sri Lanka. The Sri Lankan government said the vessel had suffered "engine failure" - though it did not elaborate on the circumstances.

Sri Lanka's media minister told parliament the government was trying to "minimize the loss of lives and safeguard regional peace." That is a delicate line to walk for a small island nation suddenly at the center of a superpower confrontation it had nothing to do with.

The seizure of two Iranian naval vessels in Sri Lankan waters in 48 hours illustrates how far the war's gravitational pull extends. Sri Lanka is not a party to any alliance. It is not a Middle Eastern country. It is 4,000 kilometers from Tehran. And yet the war arrived at its doorstep all the same.

US Admiral Brad Cooper, head of US Central Command, announced Thursday that US forces have now sunk more than 30 Iranian ships since the war began Saturday - including a drone carrier described as "roughly the size of a World War II aircraft carrier." The US military released black-and-white footage of that carrier ablaze after multiple strikes. The Iranian military did not immediately acknowledge the attack. [AP News Live]

Trump's Regime Change Admission

The torpedo attack was jaw-dropping. Trump's Axios interview the same day was something else entirely.

In remarks published Thursday, Trump said he should have a say in who replaces Ayatollah Ali Khamenei as Iran's supreme leader. Khamenei was killed in the opening strikes of the war. Trump's comments were unambiguous about what the war's actual endgame looks like.

"We want someone that will bring harmony and peace to Iran. I have to be involved in the appointment, like with Delcy in Venezuela." - President Donald Trump, to Axios, March 5, 2026

Trump also ruled out Mojtaba Khamenei - Ayatollah Khamenei's son and a front-runner to succeed his father - calling him "a lightweight." [AP News]

The Venezuela reference was telling. In January, a US military operation captured Nicolas Maduro and transported him to the US to face federal drug conspiracy charges. Maduro's former vice president, Delcy Rodriguez, took power as acting president. Trump now considers himself a template-setter for regime transition operations.

The comments crystallized what critics had long suspected: that the stated war aims - eliminating Iran's nuclear program and degrading its missile capabilities - were never the full picture. The Trump administration is seeking to reshape what post-war Iran looks like from the top down.

The White House and State Department have not provided details about what "immunity" means for Iranians who "help take back their country" - a phrase Trump has used repeatedly. No formal transition mechanism has been announced. No exile government has been recognized. The plan, as articulated publicly, amounts to: bomb until the regime collapses, then install someone we prefer.

Iran's ambassador to Egypt, Mojtaba Ferdousi Pour, told the Associated Press on Thursday that Iran has not requested talks and will not negotiate. "There will be no trust in Trump," he said. "A lack of trust makes such engagement impossible after talks for a possible nuclear deal twice failed and ended with war." [AP News]

An Iranian cleric, Ayatollah Abdollah Javadi Amoli - one of Shiite Islam's highest-ranking clerical figures - called on state television Thursday for what amounted to a fatwa on Trump, calling for the shedding of both Israeli and "Trump's blood." It is a rare step for an ayatollah of that rank and reflects the existential fury building inside what remains of Iran's religious establishment.

The Military Surge That Is Coming

Hegseth has a habit of telegraphing punches. On Thursday, speaking at US Central Command headquarters, he did it again.

"It's more fighter squadrons, it's more capabilities, it's more defensive capabilities. And it's more bomber pulses more frequently." - Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, US Central Command, March 5, 2026

"About to surge dramatically" were his exact words regarding American firepower over Tehran. [AP News]

Israel's top general, Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir, provided a military assessment Thursday that was simultaneously impressive and alarming: 80% of Iran's air defenses have been destroyed, and 60% of its missile launchers are gone. Yet Zamir himself said: "The threat has not yet been removed." An enemy with 20% of its air defenses operational and 40% of its missile launch capacity intact can still kill people. It has been doing exactly that every day since Saturday.

Iran launched another wave of missiles at Tel Aviv on Thursday. The Israeli military confirmed strikes are hitting Beirut's southern suburbs as well, with mass evacuation warnings issued for the area. UN peacekeepers on the ground in southern Lebanon are reporting active ground combat as Israeli troops cross the border - a second front opening even as the main campaign over Iran continues.

The contradiction is visible: Hegseth says a surge is coming. Israel says the mission is mostly accomplished. Speaker Mike Johnson says "the mission is nearly accomplished." But the bombs are still falling, the missiles are still launching, and 14 countries are now sustaining active damage from a conflict that, a week ago, had not yet begun.

US carrier-based strike aircraft have been central to the Iran campaign. Hegseth promises 'more bomber pulses more frequently.' (Unsplash)

The Human Cost: Schools, Sailors, and Civilians

Iran's Foundation of Martyrs and Veterans Affairs reports at least 1,230 people killed inside Iran since the war began. The figure does not distinguish between military personnel and civilians - a significant gap. The Red Crescent Society of Iran says strikes have now hit 174 cities across the country. Hospitals, pharmacies, schools, police stations, gyms, missile launchers, government buildings in Tehran and leadership compounds have all been struck.

The single deadliest incident so far: a strike on an elementary school in the southern city of Minab killed more than 160 people, according to Iran's state-run IRNA news agency. The school was near a military base. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, when asked by reporters about the Minab strike, said he did not have details but that the US "would not deliberately target a school." Israel said it was not involved in the strike. No formal investigation has been announced.

The war's death toll extends beyond Iran's borders:

For Israeli civilians, three siblings - ages 13, 15 and 16 - were killed in a single strike. A Filipina caretaker died escorting an elderly woman to a shelter. A mother of three who volunteered as a medic did not survive. The human dimension of this war does not fit neatly into military briefings.

Timeline: Six Days That Remade the Middle East

Congress: Divided, Powerless, and Going Through the Motions

Both chambers of Congress have now voted on the Iran war. Both have declined to stop it.

The Senate went first on Wednesday, defeating a war powers resolution. The House followed Thursday with a razor-thin 212-219 vote that rejected a similar measure. Two Republicans broke with their party to vote with Democrats. It was not enough.

The House vote revealed the political geometry of American wartime politics in 2026. Republicans largely see the conflict as an opportunity - the destruction of a government that has "long menaced the West," as the AP reported. Democrats almost unanimously opposed the war, framing it as an unconstitutional unilateral action that bypassed Congress's sole authority to declare war.

"Donald Trump is not a king, and if he believes the war with Iran is in our national interest, then he must come to Congress and make the case." - Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), ranking member, House Foreign Affairs Committee

Speaker Mike Johnson offered a different framing, simultaneously claiming the war is "not a war" and that the "mission is nearly accomplished." He warned that limiting presidential authority while US forces are already engaged would be "dangerous." [AP News]

The constitutional argument is not trivial. The United States has not formally declared war since 1942. The Iran campaign was launched by executive order without congressional authorization. The War Powers Resolution of 1973, which Congress passed specifically to limit presidential war-making after Vietnam, is being tested against a presidency that has made a habit of ignoring statutory constraints.

Several members compared the situation to the early days of Afghanistan and Iraq - wars that began with bipartisan support or passive acquiescence and ended with decades of entanglement. Those Sept. 11-era veterans serving in Congress now carry that institutional memory. It did not produce enough votes to stop anything.

The War That Rewrote the Map

Fourteen countries are now sustaining active damage from a conflict that began between three. That number comes from the AP's own tracking, and it is likely to grow.

Azerbaijan accused Iran on Thursday of conducting drone strikes against it - an accusation Tehran denied. The claim, if accurate, would mean the war has crossed into the Caucasus. Gulf states including those hosting major US military installations have been hit by Iranian missiles. The US State Department says it has evacuated non-emergency personnel and families from six countries and has issued departure advisories for citizens in more than a dozen more.

Airspace is closed over Iran, Israel, Lebanon, and multiple Gulf states. The Strait of Hormuz - the narrow chokepoint through which roughly 20% of global oil supply passes - has been disrupted. Cruise ships cannot transit it. The disruption is not yet a complete blockade, but the shipping data tells the story: the flow of vessels through the strait has changed dramatically since Saturday. Oil prices spiked Thursday to their highest level since summer 2024. [AP News]

Global airlines have rerouted around the region. Russia, Germany, India and dozens of other governments have scrambled repatriation flights for their citizens. The United Kingdom reportedly has more than 138,000 nationals in the immediate Gulf region. The US has activated consular emergency operations in multiple countries simultaneously.

China, which depends on Gulf oil for much of its energy imports, is watching with what the BBC describes as "unsettled" caution. Beijing has not condemned the strikes. It has not endorsed them. It is calculating the cost to its Belt and Road interests, its energy security, and its broader regional relationships - while publicly calling for diplomacy that no one is currently practicing.

What Comes Next

Hegseth's promise of a surge in the coming days is the most immediate variable. If the US adds more fighter squadrons, accelerates bomber pulses and expands the target set, the question is whether Iran - with 80% of its air defenses gone - can sustain meaningful retaliation. The answer so far has been yes: missiles are still reaching Israel. Drones are still launching. Iran's dispersed launch infrastructure is proving harder to eliminate than pre-war assessments suggested.

Iran's endgame, as analyzed by BBC Persian correspondent Amir Azimi, appears to center on endurance. Tehran's strategy seems to rest on a belief that it can absorb strikes longer than its adversaries can sustain the political and economic costs of war. Oil prices rising, markets volatile, Congress restless, India angry - every day the war continues without a decisive Iranian collapse is a day Iran's calculus becomes slightly more defensible to its remaining regional allies.

Trump's regime change rhetoric creates a new complication. If the stated goal is now to install a US-approved Iranian supreme leader rather than merely degrade nuclear and military capability, there is no defined military endpoint. No territory to capture. No treaty to sign. No surrender ceremony. Regime change by external force has a well-documented track record in this region. Iraq. Libya. Afghanistan. The pattern is not encouraging.

Iran has not requested talks. Its ambassador says there will be no trust in Trump. An ayatollah has called for Trump's blood. And the US military is adding bomber squadrons.

The IRIS Dena, now resting on the floor of the Indian Ocean southwest of Sri Lanka, is a monument to how far this conflict has already traveled from where it began. A ship that left an Indian port on good terms with 74 navies, including the American one, was sent to the bottom by an American torpedo eight days later.

Day 7 starts at dawn.