30/04/2020
On This Day: April 30th, 1980:
Six armed men entered the Iranian Embassy in South Kensington, taking hostages and beginning a six day, high profile standoff.
(The details of the Iranian Embassy Siege were reported live, gained international coverage and has been extensively covered in books and autobiograpies. As such, this article focuses only on the actions of The SAS. I say that so readers do not imagine I have intentionally ignored the brilliant work of the police and government personnel, or indeed the courage displayed by the hostages.)
On the first day of the siege, two teams from the Special Air Service (SAS) were dispatched from Hereford to Regent's Park Barracks where they took up covert positions and began planning for a potential assault.
As negotiations went back and forth between the hostage takers and the Police, the SAS were busy studying architectural plans, building profiles of the hostage takers and creating access routes into the embassy.
By the sixth day, the stress of the situation on both sides led to a breakdown in negotiations and shots were heard from inside the embassy. Control was signed over to Lieutenant Colonel Mike Rose. At 19:23, Operation Ni**od, the SAS assault began.
The meticulously planned assault got off to a difficult start as an abseiling SAS trooper became entangled and explosives could not be used for fear of injuring him. They smashed an entrance into the embassy, alerting the hostage takers inside. Shortly after, a fire began severely burning the entangled man, who was cut free and continued the assault despite his injuries.
At part of the co-ordinated assault, Blue Team detonated explosives on a first floor window, in full view of the assembled television crews who were broadcasting live. A brief, violent struggle took place in which the SAS troopers killed five of the hostage takers and captured the sixth. At the height of the raid, one of the hostage takers produced a gr***de in the vicinity of the hostages. An SAS trooper pushed him to the bottom of the stairs where he was shot dead.
The event, broadcast live launched the SAS to an unwelcome fame and they were swamped with applications. The event exemplified the British governments policy of "Refusing to give in to terrorist demands".
To this day you can walk in to almost any pub in Britain and meet one of the thousands of men who stormed the balcony.
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Picture shown: SAS troopers at the Iranian Embassy
