Smart Captain. No reason to die from the Mullahs. He has zero chance of success. Notice his crew did not object to this?
The article did not mention anything about about the crew other than 208 officers and men. If it had been me I’d enjoy the chance for shore leave. They will probably sit out the remainder of the war on that Island unless some other neutral country offers to take them .
None of them want to eat a Mk48. Smart ... Hang out in Sri Lanka, wait for the fuss and feathers to stop ... then hope that when they get back to Iran/Persia it’s no longer run by lunatic ayatollahs.
The last time this happened was 17 December 1939. The captain chose honorable suicide and scuttled his ship in order to save the crew of the Admiral Graf Spee and prevent a state of the art vessel from falling into British hands.