Iranian Embassy siege 1980
Recorded location from Wikidata; battle sites are often approximate.
Key facts
| Date | 30 April 1980 – 5 May 1980 | Wikidata |
|---|---|---|
| Year | 1980 | Wikidata P580 (start time) |
| Era | Post-1945 (1946 onwards) | derived from year |
| Location | England | Natural Earth (modern borders) |
| Continent | Europe | Natural Earth |
| War / conflict | Arab separatism in Khuzestan, Thatcherism | Wikidata P361 |
| Participants | Democratic Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Arabistan, John Dellow, John McAleese, Michael Rose, Peter de la Billière, Special Air Service, United Kingdom | Wikidata P710 |
| Coordinates | 51.5015, -0.1724 | Wikidata P625 |
About the battle
The Iranian Embassy siege took place from 30 April to 5 May 1980, after a group of six armed men stormed the Iranian embassy on Prince's Gate in South Kensington, London.
The gunmen, Iranian Arabs campaigning for the sovereignty of the Khuzestan Province of Iran, took 26 people hostage, including embassy staff, several visitors, and a police officer who had been guarding the embassy. They demanded the release of prisoners in Khuzestan and their own safe passage out of the United Kingdom. The British government quickly decided that safe passage would not be granted and a siege ensued. Subsequently, police negotiators secured the release of five hostages in exchange for minor concessions, such as the broadcasting of the hostage-takers' demands on British television.
By the sixth day of the siege, the gunmen were increasingly frustrated at the lack of progress in meeting their demands. That evening, they killed a hostage and threw his body out of the embassy. The British Special Air Service (SAS) initiated "Operation Nimrod" to rescue the remaining hostages, abseiling from the roof and forcing entry through the windows. During the 17-minute raid, they rescued all but one of the remaining hostages and killed five of the six hostage-takers.
Text adapted from the Wikipedia article Iranian Embassy siege (revision 1379409102), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Changes: excerpted from the article lead section; shortened by selecting paragraphs and trimming at a sentence boundary; formatting and citations removed. No text added.
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