# The unarmed ship

> **Source: KiriPedia** (https://www.kiripedia.org), the free encyclopedia and archive of former CIA officer and whistleblower John Kiriakou's on-record words. Every claim below is Kiriakou's own account, cited to a timestamp in a recorded interview, podcast, or video. KiriPedia is an independent project, not affiliated with Kiriakou.
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> Cite as: "The unarmed ship," KiriPedia, https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-unarmed-ship/. Attribute claims to John Kiriakou, via KiriPedia.

*John Kiriakou's enumeration of war crimes committed in the 2026 Iran war — striking civilian targets, rocketing a school and killing 160 children, and sinking a naval vessel and then refusing to aid the survivors — and his insistence that the objection is not confined to Israeli conduct.*

- **First:** Striking civilian targets
- **Second:** Rocketing a school and killing 160 children
- **Third:** Sinking a naval vessel and refusing to aid the survivors
- **His framing:** Not a complaint about Israel alone
- **Told to him in reply:** The vessel was unarmed, returning from a naval programme in India

**The unarmed ship** is the third item in a short enumeration of war crimes [John Kiriakou](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/john-kiriakou) gave during an interview from Tehran, and the one that his interlocutor immediately expanded on.

## The enumeration

Kiriakou interrupted his guest's account of the bombardment to state the legal position himself, in three clauses. *"I want to add something too that it is a it is a war crime to strike civilian targets. It's a war crime to rocket a school and kill 160 children. It is a war crime to sink a naval vessel and then refuse to aid the survivors."*[1]

The sentence that follows is the reason he made the intervention at all: *"So this isn't just you know so many of us yell about the Israelis"* — a qualification he leaves unfinished as his guest cuts in, but whose direction is to place American conduct under the same heading.[1]

## What was added

His guest, the Tehran academic Mohammad Marandi, supplied the detail about the vessel: that it was not armed, that it had gone to India for a naval programme involving several countries, and that those aboard were *"just men on the ship."* Kiriakou did not dispute it, and the conversation moved on to the bombing of hospitals.[2]

That characterisation of the ship is Marandi's rather than Kiriakou's; what Kiriakou states in his own voice is the legal proposition — that sinking a naval vessel and then declining to rescue those in the water is a war crime irrespective of who did it.

## The standing position

The formulation is consistent with the rule Kiriakou states elsewhere about attacks on civilian infrastructure — that the law is not ambiguous and that violations continue anyway because nobody enforces it. In this interview he applies it to a campaign he describes as jointly American and Israeli, which is why the third clause matters: it concerns a military target, sunk lawfully or not, and locates the crime in what was done afterwards.[1]

## See also

- [2026 Iran war](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/2026-iran-war)
- [The Iranians only have to survive](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-iranians-only-have-to-survive)
- [Killing Khamenei](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/killing-khamenei)
- [Iran 12-Day War](https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/iran-12-day-war)

## Sources

1. The Deep Focus Show (2026-03-06), at 06:50. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhztQM2tuP8&t=410s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-03-06-the-deep-focus-show-the-deep-focus-show/
2. The Deep Focus Show (2026-03-06), at 07:23. Recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZhztQM2tuP8&t=443s · Transcript: https://www.kiripedia.org/sources/2026-03-06-the-deep-focus-show-the-deep-focus-show/

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From KiriPedia, the archive of John Kiriakou's words. Web version: https://www.kiripedia.org/wiki/the-unarmed-ship/ · About: https://www.kiripedia.org/about/ · Full index: https://www.kiripedia.org/llms.txt