The Iranian Embassy siege of 1980: the six-day crisis that was the making of the SAS

A six-day standoff began, as the Metropolitan Police negotiated with the gunmen. In the meantime, the SAS prepared to free the hostages by violent means. The media gathered.

On 5 May, three shots were heard inside the embassy and the body of Abbas Lavasani, an Iranian official, was pushed out of the building. Fearing for the lives of those still held captive, the government ordered the SAS to carry out Operation Nimrod, in which teams of SAS soldiers burst into the building.

All but one of the remaining hostages (Ali Akbar Samadzadeh) were rescued and none of the SAS men lost their lives in the assault. Five of the six terrorists were killed. The lone survivor, Fowzi Badavi Nejad, spent 28 years in prison.

The Iranian embassy siege is one of the most significant events in modern British history. What new insights did you want to bring to the story?

Ben Macintyre: The siege was highly significant, but it is also one of the most heavily mythologised events in modern history. Many see it as an example of great SAS derring-do, which it was, but it’s actually much more complicated and more interesting than that.

If you ask the average person what the siege was about, they would probably say: “It was after the Iranian Revolution, so it was about Islamic fundamentalism.” Which it sort of was, except that these six Iranian Arabs who took over the embassy in 1980 were actually fighting for autonomy within Iran. They were opposed to the Ayatollah and his new regime, and they chose Britain as a target because they believed Britain was sympathetic to their cause and that they would get a fair hearing.

The siege was highly significant, but it is also one of the most heavily mythologised events in modern history. Many see it as an example of great SAS derring-do, which it was, but it’s actually much more complicated and more interesting than that

So there’s a lot of misunderstanding about what happened. And I loved writing the book because it’s a story that takes place in a very enclosed theatre: 26 hostages being held effectively in one room inside this building. It’s a story about what ordinary people do in absolutely extraordinary circumstances.

What should we know about the Middle East in 1980 to understand this story?

The 1979 Iranian revolution is, in some ways, the most important event of the latter half of the 20th century. It changed everything. If there’d been no Iranian Revolution, in the long run, there’d be no Iraq War, no Afghanistan invasion, no 9/11. International terrorism would have taken a very different shape. And the modern world would be completely different.

In 1980, none of this had settled down. The Iranian regime was highly unstable and some of the participants in the revolution were looking for support from the Ayatollah’s regime. Among them were the minority Arabs who lived in the corner of Iran that contains most of the oil, Khuzestan. [Persians comprise the largest ethnic group in Iran, with Arabs today making up a few per cent of the population.]

• Read more | The Iranian Revolution: why 1979's uprising still shapes the Middle East

They had supported the revolution and believed the Ayatollah was going to come through with a promise to give them individual rights and self-government to some extent. Not only did that not happen, but the Ayatollah’s security forces clamped down ferociously on a kind of Arab insurgency that was going on there.

From that emerged this little group, these six men trained in Iraq and backed by Saddam Hussein, who decided to stage a terrorist spectacular in central London.

They attacked the Iranian embassy, which was staffed and occupied by Iranians supportive of the Ayatollah’s regime. It was intended to be a direct attack on Tehran, in order to persuade the Ayatollah to release political hostages. It was a battle taking place between Iran and Iraq, but on the streets of London.

The demands of the terrorists seemed to shift during the siege. Did they have a clear idea of what they wanted to achieve?

These were people who had been fooled. They believed – and had been told by the Iraqi intelligence service – that they would stage this occupation, they wouldn’t have to kill anyone, they would enable the release of their fellow Arabs from Iranian prisons and then would be flown back to the Middle East.

That sounds like a naïve assumption, but it was not without precedent. This was a period when terrorist spectaculars could prove successful and the perpetrators were, in some cases, able to persuade governments to fly them back to safety. In fact, Britain in the past had done that. Under the Heath government, there was an example of a Palestinian guerrilla, Leila Khaled, who had hijacked a plane, been captured in Britain but then been sent back, and she’s still alive today.

We think of terrorists as people who have little compunction about employing violence. But these six men were keen to avoid killing the hostages, weren’t they?

That’s correct, they were a complicated crew. These were men of violence. They were men who had been brutalised by events in their past. In several cases, family members had been tortured and murdered by the Iranian security services – although that doesn’t forgive or excuse in any way what they did. They were prepared to kill and they did kill. But they did not, I suspect, want to kill.

This time around, Britain wasn’t prepared to negotiate. How integral was Margaret Thatcher to the approach taken?

Margaret Thatcher had been in power for less than a year and had not faced a major test of this sort. But the Troubles in Northern Ireland were reaching an appalling crescendo and she knew she was going to face terrorist problems.

• Read more | How should history remember Margaret Thatcher?

The siege became the template for the way she would deal with them. Thatcher made it clear that, while she was happy for the police to keep negotiating, she was not going to let these people – who had already committed crimes simply by breaking into the embassy – get away with it. They were not going to be allowed to fly away. So there was a complete disconnect between what one side wanted and what the other side was prepared to grant.

There was also another government of whom demands were being made. Was Iran prepared to grant any concessions?

Absolutely not. Here one has to put this into context. As this siege was taking place on the streets of London, the American embassy in Tehran was also under siege, from militant ‘students’ (a lot of whom purportedly worked for the Ayatollah’s security services).

So while the Iranians were creating their own hostage situation within Iran, you’ve got this satellite one happening here. And, of course, the US was putting pressure on Britain to achieve a successful outcome to the siege in London in the hope this would encourage the Iranians in Tehran to free the hostages there.

The negotiations carried on for days. What impact did that have on the hostages?

It was astonishingly tense inside there. You had this extended standoff where relationships begin to emerge between the hostages and the hostage takers. There’s lots we can say in terms of Stockholm syndrome and those effects, but there’s also the reverse, which is Lima syndrome, where the gunmen develop relationships with their captives to the point that they are unable to continue and to fulfil their aims.

Plus there were emerging relationships between the gunmen and the hostage negotiators: the handful of police who were working the telephones and other methods of trying to contact them. The siege was the biggest media story in the world. Journalists flew in from all over the globe and an entire press encampment was set up in Hyde Park. There was intense media scrutiny, which, of course, added to the stress on all sides.

As you say, the hostages and hostage takers grew quite close. Why was this?

It is a familiar pattern, I am told, by people who have studied this. What happens over time is that, in many instances, the hostages come to see the hostage takers as their protectors. It sounds contradictory, but they come to see the police outside as working against them, taking too long, not providing the answers, not acceding to what they begin to perceive as the hostage takers’ perfectly reasonable demands.

And certainly in the course of these six days, some of the hostages began to see the hostage takers in quite a sympathetic light and vice versa. Some of the younger gunmen began to feel a great sympathy for the people they had taken captive and as time went on they started to share food that had been sent in by the police. They began to discuss their lives with each other.

There was an extraordinary moment when they’d all been sent in some takeaway food and one of the hostages said: “We need to celebrate this moment.” He said they should all sign a memento, so he tore up these takeaway boxes and everyone signed their names with little messages to each other. What strikes me is just how friendly those messages between hostages and hostage takers were.

At the same time, one of the gunmen found an Instamatic camera in a drawer and took what can only be described as souvenir photographs. It looks like they’re having a picnic together in this extraordinarily enclosed world. Of course, they had no real idea of what was happening outside. They didn’t know that the SAS assault troops were ready and waiting in the next room.

Now, as you’ve hinted there, the SAS eventually ended the siege in a violent manner. Is there any way this could have ended bloodlessly?

It’s difficult to speculate, but I’m in agreement with Professor John Gunn, who was the police psychiatrist on the scene, that if they’d been able to keep negotiations going a little longer the whole thing might well have crumbled, because the gunmen were so exhausted and they were beginning to fall out among themselves.

The police had inserted eavesdropping equipment into the building and were able to track the relationships between the gunmen, and it was clear those were beginning to break up.

Perhaps things would have worked out differently had the negotiators been able to accede to one of the gunmen’s requests. One of the things they wanted was for Middle Eastern diplomats to come and talk to them. They wanted to be taken seriously. Thatcher did not allow it to happen, and the diplomats themselves were not keen – but it’s my belief that if they had brought in those diplomats, then it might have been resolved.

How much preparation was required for the SAS operation?

The SAS was largely unknown in Britain at this point. But since the terrorist atrocities of the early 1970s, some of which had been very badly handled (by authorities in other countries), the British government had set in train contingency plans should a similar operation be required.

• Read more | The history of the SAS

The SAS had been training intensively for this for many years. They trained in a building in Hereford shire called the Killing House. They mocked up a hostage scenario, with cardboard hostages and cardboard gunmen, in different situations. They might be in the dark, it might be full of smoke, there might be gas bombs going off, and the SAS would have to break in and try to neutralise the gunmen and save the hostages.

(Believe it or not, the royal family undergoes training here, in order to experience what it would be like to be taken hostage and then liberated by the SAS.) The SAS were ready and had trained heavily. The only thing they had never ever done was actually carry out a hostage rescue operation like this.

The operation came with huge risks. How difficult a decision was it to authorise the SAS to storm the embassy?

It was a terribly difficult decision. For the policeman in overall charge of the operation, John Dellow, it was a terrible moment. Because the police believed that two hostages had been killed, they felt they had to hand over to the SAS to carry out what was codenamed Operation Nimrod.

It was the lowest moment of Dellow’s career because he felt he had failed. The police had hoped to end the standoff bloodlessly but this became impossible. Peter de la Billière, the director of special forces in Britain, had warned that there were likely to be 40 per cent casualties, at best. And that’s despite the fact that this was an incredibly well-planned operation: floor by floor, minute by minute, man by man.

In the end, the storming of the embassy was far more successful than its organisers feared it might be. To what do you attribute that success?

It was about 50 per cent luck. Even today, the soldiers who participated in this operation – and I’ve interviewed pretty much all of them – say they were incredibly fortunate. Bullets were flying everywhere. Grenades were going off. Tear gas was spreading throughout the building.

The SAS were attacking front, back and through the roof, and up through the basement. It was dark. It was filled with smoke. It’s amazing that only one SAS soldier was slightly wounded and that they got almost all of the hostages out.

Even today, the soldiers who participated in this operation – and I’ve interviewed pretty much all of them – say they were incredibly fortunate

The other 50 per cent was very careful planning, very good training and courage. The SAS did what they were trained to do and they did it spectacularly well. You can argue they did it too well in the sense that they went in very hard indeed, and there have been inquiries since about the nature of what they did. But I think pretty much everyone agrees that they were given a brief and they carried it out.

And this was all unfolding live on television. How unusual was that?

I was a 16-year-old schoolboy at the time and I was watching the World Snooker Championship final between Alex ‘Hurricane’ Higgins and Cliff Thorburn.

It was getting quite exciting, actually, and then suddenly it cut away to this live footage of men in black overalls and balaclavas abseiling down the outside of a building and bursting their way in, with smoke bombs, machine guns and hand grenades. It was just the most extraordinary sight.

A younger generation will not really believe this, but we were not used to seeing live news like that – it just didn’t happen and then suddenly it was being broadcast live on all three channels.

How did the siege affect the SAS?

The SAS suddenly became the most famous special forces group in the world. Other governments began to ask for SAS help, and they were lent out to other countries to carry out similar operations. Meanwhile, the numbers of people applying to join the SAS rocketed. There were people turning up at recruiting centres saying, “I’ve seen the television pictures. I want to be one of those.”

Some in the SAS think the Iranian embassy siege was actually a disaster for them, because it turned the SAS from a secret organisation to something that everybody not only knew about, but wanted to know more about. It’s created a situation that they still wrestle with, in that they’re an intensely secretive organisation who nonetheless flourish on their mystique. They’re always slightly caught between wanting to be secret and wanting to tell their stories.

What was the legacy of the siege?

There was a perception that the successful conclusion to the siege would somehow encourage the Ayatollah’s government to look more kindly on Britain and, more specifically, to look more kindly on the American hostages it was holding in Tehran. Nothing of the sort took place, however. The Iranians were not going to be swayed by this operation, although they were pleased with the outcome.

One long-term impact is that the taking of diplomatic hostages kind of stopped. Terrorist groups began to aim away from diplomatic premises in the belief that it wasn’t really going to work. Plus the siege really did set the stamp on Margaret Thatcher’s approach to terrorism. Her attitude towards the Irish Republican Army (IRA) hardened massively with all the consequences that we know sprang from that.

Ben Macintyre is a journalist and author who has written numerous bestselling works of history, including The Siege: The Remarkable Story of the Greatest SAS Hostage Drama (Viking, 2024)

This article was first published in the November 2024 issue of BBC History Magazine