What Happened
Background
Storming the Embassy
Aftermath
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| Operation Nimrod > Background |
Background to the Iranian Embassy Siege
At 11:30am on April 30th 1980, six terrorists calling themselves the "Democratic Revolutionary Movement for the Liberation of Arabistan" (DRMLA) seized control of the Iranian embassy in South Kensington, London, England. The terrorists' initial demand was for autonomy for Khuzestan, an oil-rich province of Southern Iran, but later changed their demand to be the release of 91 alleged political prisoners held by the Iranian government.
(Later, after the incident was over, it was to emerge that the Iraq had sponsored, trained and armed the terrorists. This was most likely because Saddam Hussein wanted to gain control of Khuzestan - when the Iran-Iraq war broke later in the year, capturing this province became a key Iraqi objective.)
When the terrorists seized control of the embassy building, they took 26 hostages. Over the next few days, 5 hostages were released. Police negotiators tried to maintain calm and hoped to work towards an eventual peaceful solution; they supplied food and cigarettes, as well as getting the BBC to broadcast a statement from the terrorists, after threats to kill a hostage.
After six days, on May 5th, the situation dramatically deteriorated when the terrorists did kill a hostage - the Iranian press attaché Abbas Lavasani - and threw his body out of the building. The British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher, then decided to order a rescue operation, and control on the scene was passed from the Metropolitan Police to the Ministry of Defence.
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| World War II |
| Operation Barbarossa 1941 German Invasion of Russia |
| Operation Citadel 1943 The Battle of Kursk |
| Operation Dragoon 1944 Invasion of southern France |
| Operation Varsity 1945 Crossing the Rhine |
| Invasions That Never Were |
| Operation Sealion 1940 German invasion of England |
| Operation Olympic 1945 US invasion of southern Japan |
| Operation Coronet 1946 US invasion of northern Japan |
| Special Forces |
| Operation Entebbe 1976 Entebbe Airport Rescue |
| Operation Nimrod 1980 Iranian Embassy Siege |
| British Cold War Operations |
| Operation Musketeer 1956 Suez Crisis |
| Operation Corporate 1982 Falklands War |
| Operation Black Buck 1982 Vulcan raids on Port Stanley |
| Operation Granby 1990-91 Persian Gulf |
| British Post Cold War |
| Operation Herrick 2002- Afghanistan |