Iranian Embassy siege

Wikipedia contributors · CC BY-SA · EN · 04/10/2026

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. The sole remaining gunman served 27 years in prison in Britain. The operation brought the SAS to the public eye for the first time and bolstered the reputation of Margaret Thatcher's government. The SAS was quickly overwhelmed by the number of applications it received from people inspired by the operation and experienced greater demand for its expertise from foreign governments. Damaged by a fire which started during the assault, the embassy building did not reopen until 1993.

The SAS raid, televised live on a bank holiday evening, became a defining moment in British history and proved a career boost for several journalists; it became the subject of multiple documentaries and works of fiction, including several films, television series and video games.

History

The hostage-takers were members of the Democratic Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Arabistan (DRFLA), Iranian Arabs calling for the establishment of an autonomous Arab state in the southern region of the Iranian province of Khuzestan which is home to an Arabic-speaking minority. The oil-rich area had become the source of much of Iran's wealth, having been developed by multi-national companies during the reign of the Pahlavi dynasty.

According to Oan Ali Mohammed, it was the suppression of the Arab sovereignty movement that led him to attack the Iranian Embassy in London. The plan was inspired by the Iran hostage crisis in which supporters of the revolution held the staff of the American Embassy in Tehran hostage.

Arrival in London

Using Iraqi passports, Oan and three other members of the DRFLA arrived in London on 31 March 1980 and rented a flat in Earl's Court, West London. They claimed they had met by chance on the flight. Over the following days, the group swelled, with up to a dozen men in the flat on one occasion.

Oan was 27 and from Khūzestān; he had studied at the University of Tehran, where he became politically active. He had been imprisoned by SAVAK, the Shah's secret police, and bore scars which he said were from torture in SAVAK custody. The other members of his group were Shakir Abdullah Radhil, known as "Faisal", Oan's second-in-command who also claimed to have been tortured by SAVAK; Shakir Sultan Said, or "Hassan"; Themir Moammed Hussein, or Abbas; Fowzi Badavi Nejad, or "Ali"; and Makki Hanoun Ali, the youngest of the group, who went by the name of "Makki".

On 30 April the men informed their landlord that they were going to Bristol for a week and then returning to Iraq, stated that they would no longer require the flat, and arranged for their belongings to be sent to Iraq. They left the building at 09:30 (BST) on 30 April. Their initial destination is unknown, but en route to the Iranian Embassy they collected firearms (including pistols and submachine guns), ammunition and hand grenades. The weapons, predominantly Soviet-made, are believed to have been smuggled into the United Kingdom in a diplomatic bag belonging to Iraq. Shortly before 11:30, and almost two hours after vacating the nearby flat in Lexham Gardens in South Kensington, the six men arrived outside the embassy.

According to a 2014 academic study into the Iran–Iraq War (which broke out later in 1980), the attackers were "recruited and trained" by the Iraqi government as part of a campaign of subversion against Iran, which included sponsorship of several separatist movements.

Special Air Service

The Special Air Service (SAS) is a regiment of the British Army and part of the United Kingdom's special forces, originally formed in the Second World War to conduct irregular warfare. Western European governments were prompted to form specialist police and military counter-terrorist units following the Munich massacre at the 1972 Olympic Games, during which a police operation to end a hostage crisis ended in chaos. In the resulting firefight, a police officer, most of the hostage-takers, and all of the hostages were killed. In response, West Germany created GSG 9, widely regarded as the first modern dedicated tactical counter-terrorism and hostage-rescue unit, and was quickly followed by the French GIGN.

Following these examples, the British government, worried that the country was unprepared for a similar crisis in the United Kingdom, ordered the formation of the Counter Revolutionary Warfare (CRW) Wing of the SAS. This became the UK's primary anti-terrorist and anti-hijacking unit. The SAS had taken part in counter-insurgency operations abroad since 1945 and had provided training to the protective teams of foreign officials whose security was regarded as important for regional stability and British foreign policy. As a result, it was considered better prepared for the role than any unit in the UK police or elsewhere in the British armed forces. The CRW Wing's first overseas deployment came during the hijacking of Lufthansa Flight 181 in 1977, when two SAS members were sent by the British government as liaison officers in an advisory and support capacity to assist the German authorities, their primary task being to draw on regional knowledge of the Arabian Peninsula gained during their SAS service, liaise with local authorities in the region, and provide auxiliary tactical assistance as GSG 9 planned and carried out the rescue operation.

Siege

Day one: 30 April

At approximately 11:30 on Wednesday 30 April the six heavily armed members of DRFLA stormed the Iranian Embassy building on Prince's Gate, South Kensington. The gunmen quickly overpowered PC Trevor Lock of the Metropolitan Police's Diplomatic Protection Group (DPG). Lock was carrying a concealed Smith & Wesson .38-calibre revolver, but was unable to draw it before he was overpowered, although he did manage to press the "panic button" on his radio. Lock was later frisked, but the gunman conducting the search did not find the constable's weapon. He remained in possession of the revolver, and to keep it concealed he refused to remove his coat, which he told the gunmen was to "preserve his image" as a police officer. The officer also refused offers of food throughout the siege for fear that the weapon would be seen if he had to use the toilet and a gunman decided to escort him.

Although the majority of the people in the embassy were captured, three managed to escape—two by climbing out of a ground-floor window and the third by climbing across a first-floor parapet to the Ethiopian Embassy next door. A fourth person, Gholam-Ali Afrouz, the chargé d'affaires and thus most senior Iranian official present, briefly escaped by jumping out of a first-floor window, but was injured in the process and quickly captured. Afrouz and the 25 other hostages were all taken to a room on the second floor. The majority of the hostages were embassy staff, predominantly Iranian nationals, but several British employees were also captured. The other hostages were all visitors, with the exception of Lock, the British police officer guarding the embassy. Afrouz had been appointed to the position less than a year before, his predecessor having been dismissed after the revolution. Abbas Fallahi, who had been a butler before the revolution, was appointed the doorman by Afrouz. One of the British members of staff was Ron Morris, from Battersea, who had worked for the embassy in various positions since 1947.

During the course of the siege, police and journalists established the identities of several other hostages. Mustapha Karkouti was a journalist covering the crisis at the US Embassy in Tehran and was at the embassy for an interview with Abdul Fazi Ezzati, the cultural attaché. Muhammad Hashir Faruqi was another journalist, at the embassy to interview Afrouz for an article on the Iranian Revolution. Simeon "Sim" Harris and Chris Cramer, both employees of the BBC, were at the embassy attempting to obtain visas to visit Iran, hoping to cover the aftermath of the 1979 revolution, after several unsuccessful attempts. They found themselves sitting next to Moutaba Mehrnavard, who was there to consult Ahmad Dadgar, the embassy's medical adviser, and Ali Asghar Tabatabai, who was collecting a map for use in a presentation he had been asked to give at the end of a course he had been attending.

Police arrived at the embassy almost immediately after the first reports of gunfire, and, within ten minutes, seven DPG officers were on the scene. The officers moved to surround the embassy, but retreated when a gunman appeared at a window and threatened to open fire. Deputy Assistant Commissioner John Dellow arrived nearly 30 minutes later and took command of the operation. Dellow established a temporary headquarters in his car before moving it to the Royal School of Needlework further down Prince's Gate and then to 24 Prince's Gate, a nursery school. From his various command posts, Dellow coordinated the police response, including the deployment of D11, the Metropolitan Police's marksmen, and officers with specialist surveillance equipment. Police negotiators, led by Max Vernon, made contact with Oan via a field telephone passed through one of the embassy windows, and were assisted by a negotiator and a psychiatrist. At 15:15 Oan issued the DRFLA's first demand, the release of 91 Arabs held in prisons in Khūzestān, and threatened to blow up the embassy and the hostages if this were not done by noon on 1 May.

Large numbers of journalists were on the scene quickly and were moved into a holding area to the west of the front of the embassy, while dozens of Iranian protesters also arrived near the embassy and remained there throughout the siege. A separate police command post was established to contain the protests, which descended into violent confrontations with the police on several occasions. Shortly after the beginning of the crisis, the British government's emergency committee COBR was assembled. COBR is made up of ministers, civil servants and expert advisers, including representatives from the police and the armed forces. The meeting was chaired by William Whitelaw, the Home Secretary, as Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister, was unavailable.

The Iranian government accused the British and American governments of sponsoring the attack as revenge for the ongoing siege of the US Embassy in Tehran. Given the lack of co-operation from Iran, Thatcher, kept apprised of the situation by Whitelaw, determined that British law would be applied to the embassy. At 16:30, the gunmen released their first hostage, Frieda Mozaffarian. She had been unwell since the siege began, and Oan had asked for a doctor to be sent into the embassy to treat her, but the police refused. The other hostages deceived Oan into believing that Mozaffarian was pregnant, and Oan eventually released Mozaffarian after her condition deteriorated.

Day two: 1 May

The COBR meetings continued through the night and into Thursday. Meanwhile, two teams were dispatched from the headquarters of the Special Air Service (SAS) near Hereford, and arrived at a holding area in Regent's Park Barracks. The teams, from B Squadron, complemented by specialists from other squadrons, were equipped with CS gas, stun grenades, and explosives and armed with Browning Hi-Power pistols and Heckler & Koch MP5 submachine guns. Lieutenant-Colonel Michael Rose, commander of 22 SAS, had travelled ahead of the detachment and introduced himself to Dellow, the commander of the police operation. At approximately 03:30 on 1 May, one of the SAS teams moved into the building next door to the embassy, normally occupied by the Royal College of General Practitioners, where they were briefed on Rose's "immediate action" plan, to be implemented should the SAS be required to storm the building before a more sophisticated plan could be formed.

Source and attribution

Adapted from “Iranian Embassy siege” by English Wikipedia contributors. Main paragraphs and sections are retained; tables, reference markers and technical markup are omitted. This is an encyclopedic adaptation, not a personal review. Original revision and contributor history ↗. Text is shared under CC BY-SA 4.0 ↗. Check current visitor access, tickets and transport with the relevant operator.