President Anura Kumara Dissanayake told Sri Lanka's Parliament that the United States had requested permission to land two combat aircraft armed with eight anti-ship missiles at Mattala Rajapaksa International Airport from 4–8 March. The request arrived on 26 February — two days before Operation Epic Fury began on 28 February. Colombo denied it. Sri Lanka separately denied Iran permission to dock three naval vessels. The twin refusals placed Colombo alongside Bern, which on Thursday halted all arms export licences to the United States and closed Swiss airspace to US military flights.
The 26 February date is the operative detail. Anti-ship missiles staged in southern Sri Lanka would extend US maritime strike coverage across the northern Indian Ocean — the sea lanes through which Iranian crude tankers transit toward Asian buyers and through which any Iranian naval vessels would need to pass approaching from the east. Mattala airport, built with Chinese financing during the Rajapaksa era, handles almost no commercial traffic; its military utility lies precisely in its emptiness. That the Pentagon sought combat staging rights there before hostilities began demonstrates operational planning well in advance of any public indication that war was imminent. It also shows Washington anticipated needing force projection beyond the Persian Gulf — consistent with a campaign designed to interdict Iranian maritime activity across the wider Indian Ocean basin.
Dissanayake's decision to disclose the request publicly — and to deny both belligerents — reflects Sri Lanka's effort to establish credible Non-alignment under pressure from both sides. Every country Trump named for his Strait of Hormuz escort Coalition — Australia, Japan, the United Kingdom, Germany, and France — had already formally declined to send warships . But those were refusals from treaty allies weighing the cost of participation. Sri Lanka's refusal is different in kind: a non-aligned Indian Ocean state rejecting a pre-war staging request it was never expected to discuss in public. The parliamentary disclosure places on the record a dated diplomatic communication that preceded the war by 48 hours — and narrows the administration's argument that military operations were a response to an imminent threat rather than the execution of a plan already in motion.
