Special Forces Assault on Iran Embassy - Operation Nimrod

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The date is Wednesday, the 30thof April 1980, and six men are approaching the Iranian embassy in West London. The men are Iranian Arabs, and members of a revolutionary group seeking the creation of an independent state in Southern Iran- with the Iranian revolution having taken place just a year before, the nation was still in a state of turmoil and various groups were eying the possibility of secession and the formation of their own sovereign nation. The Iranian government had responded to the wave of revolutionary zeal with brutal crackdowns, and two of the men now approaching the embassy bear the physical scars of torture at the hands of the Shah's secret police. The plan is simple: backed by the government of Iraq, the men have been armed with pistols and submachine guns along with a few hand grenades, all smuggled into Britain inside an Iraqi diplomatic bag. The six hostage takers have been emboldened by the Iranian hostage crisis during which revolutionaries held American hostages for nearly two years, and now want to use the leverage gained from taking hostages to secure the release of prisoners taken into custody by the Iranian Shah in their home region of Khuzestan. They plan to enter the embassy and overpower the single British guard there, then barricade themselves until the release of the prisoners and safe transport out of Britain is assured. If the British and Iranian authorities won't cooperate, well, they've come prepared to start killing hostages. It's 1130 hours as the six men approach the Iranian Embassy in South Kensington. Just inside is Police Constable Trevor Lock of the Metropolitan Police's Diplomatic Protection Group, and the sole armed guard present in the embassy. Hidden under his jacket is a concealed Smith & Wesson .38 calibre revolver, but as the men enter he is quickly overwhelmed and doesn't have a chance to draw his firearm. Constable Lock instead decides to cooperate as the six gunmen barricade the front door and start rounding up the embassy's occupants- if he can keep the gun a secret a time may come when he can use it to good effect. The rest of the embassy's occupants are in a panic, and two employees manage to climb out of a ground-floor window before the gunmen get to them. A third climbs out of a second story window and hops across to the Ethiopian Embassy next door, and a fourth, Gholam-Ali Afrouz, the most senior Iranian official present, and the highest value hostage, tries to escape by jumping out of a second story window but suffers a sprained ankle and the gunmen quickly recapture him. In all 26 hostages are herded to a second floor room and ordered to blockade windows with any available furniture. Most of the hostages are embassy staff and Iranian nationals, but a few are British visitors or employees also working at the embassy. Outside, police are already arriving on-scene, unbeknownst to the hostage takers Constable Lock had managed to send a distress signal over his radio before they took it from him. As the officers outside move to surround the building, one of the gunmen threatens them with his submachine gun, and the officers quickly pull back. Within thirty minutes though a blockade of the neighborhood has been established, and the Metropolitan Police's D11 unit, expert marksmen trained to eliminate threats in urban environments with precision fire, have all been deployed to vantage points around the embassy. An hour later and contact is made with the gunmen via a field telephone that's passed through one of the windows, and the leader of the group, Oan Ali Mohammed, issues their first demand: the release of 91 Arabs held in prisons in Khuzestan. If his demands are not met he will blow up the embassy with himself and the hostages inside. Before hanging up, he tells the police that they have a deadline of noon on May 1st. In response to the crisis, the British government's emergency committee, COBRA, is assembled. Made up of ministers, civil servants, and expert advisers from the police and armed forces, COBRA's job is to advise Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher on a course of action during any emergency. Contact is immediately made with the Iranian government, as the matter is technically an Iranian one with the embassy being considered Iranian soil due to the Vienna Convention. The Iranian government however accuses both the British and American governments of sponsoring the attack in retaliation for the yet ongoing siege of the US Embassy in Tehran. With no cooperation from the Iranians, Thatcher decides that British law will be applied to the embassy, even if it is technically sovereign Iranian soil. Contacting the police again through the field phone, Oan requests a doctor for one of the hostages. Frieda Mozzaffarian is physically unwell, and the other hostages have been lying to Oan and telling him that she is pregnant. Yet the police refuse to send a doctor, not wanting to give the gunmen yet another hostage, and ultimately Oan releases Mozaffarian when her condition deteriorates substantially. After securing Mazaffarian, the police inform the hostages that the British and Iranian governments are working on their demands, and food is delivered as all settle in for a sleepless night. Late that night though two teams of Britain's Special Air Service troopers arrive on-scene. The SAS are elite military operators with their roots in World War II, when they were tasked to operate deep behind enemy lines in four-man squads to sabotage German airstrips and fuel depots. With a rise in global terrorism though the British government saw a need for a specialized counter-terrorism task force, and thus the SAS was expanded with the formation of the Counter Revolutionary Warfare wing, the UK's primary anti-terrorist and anti-hijacking unit. To date the CRW troopers only have one operation under their belt, the storming of Lufthansa Flight 181 in West Germany . , as politicians consider whether they are truly needed or not. Today, Britain definitely needs its elite counter-terrorism troopers. At 0330 hours the next day, one of the two SAS teams moves into the building next door to the embassy and are briefed on an immediate action plan should the worst come to pass and the troopers need to penetrate the embassy before a proper plan can be formulated. Such a development would likely end in disaster, as the SAS troopers need the element of surprise in order to minimize the possibility of any hostages being killed by the gunmen inside, but worst come to worst, they at least have some sort of plan until a better one can be drawn up. A few hours later one of the gunmen orders a hostage to call the BBC's news desk, and after making contact with a reporter, Oan takes the phone himself. He identifies the group to which he belongs- the Democratic Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Arabistan- and assures the reporter that none of the non-Iranian hostages will be harmed. The reporter asks to speak to some of the hostages but Oan refuses and hangs up. As the news report of the call hits television screens around the world, the police outside quickly work to sever the telephone lines going into the embassy, leaving the gunmen with just the field telephone with the police for communication. Three of the non-Iranian hostages meanwhile decide that one of them must get out, and they decide that it should be Chris Cramer who is already ill. Exaggerating his existing symptoms, Cramer pretends to be seriously ill and one of the other hostages is taken to the field telephone to negotiate for a doctor. Once more the police refuse, not willing to risk giving the gunmen yet another hostage to use as leverage. Eventually, at 1115 hours, the gunmen release Cramer and he is rushed to a hospital, where he is met by police officers who grill him for information on the situation inside which is immediately relayed to the waiting SAS teams. As the noon deadline approaches, the police become convinced that the gunmen lack the ability to blow up the embassy, but they persuade Oan to a new deadline of 1400 hours. They allow this new deadline to pass as well without contacting the gunmen, and eventually Oan calls over the field telephone, altering his demands. He now wants that the British media broadcast a statement of his grievances and for ambassadors from three Arab countries to negotiate the group's safe passage out of the UK. Upon hearing the demand, Margaret Hatcher flat-out refuses any negotiation for safe passage, but does not tell the gunmen. Later that evening Oan is starting to become agitated by sounds coming from the Ethiopian Embassy next door. Unbeknownst to the gunmen, the sounds are those of SAS technicians covertly installing listening devices through the walls. Police Constable Lock is summoned and after taking a listen, correctly deduces the SAS's plans, but assures Oan that the sounds are nothing more than mice in the walls. Alerted to growing suspicion by the hostage takers over their drilling, British Gas is instructed to immediately begin drilling on an adjacent road under the guise of repairing a gas main, and the SAS techs use the noise as cover. However as the gunmen grow increasingly agitated, the drilling is ordered to stop, and in response the British Airports Authority is ordered to instruct approaching aircraft to fly over the embassy at low altitude as they came in to land at Heathrow Airport. At 0930 hours on May 2nd, the third day of the siege, Oan appears at a second-floor window and demands access to the embassy's telex system, which the police have disabled along with the phone lines. The telex can be used to rapidly send text-based messages to any other connected unit in the world, and the police do not want the gunmen to have the ability to be in direct contact with the outside world. Angry, Oan then demands to speak to somebody from the BBC, and the police agree to this demand, producing Tony Crabb the managing director of BBC Television News. Oan shouts his demands at Crabb, to be broadcast over the BBC: safe passage out of the UK to be negotiated by three ambassadors from Arab countries, and then informs Crabb to also include the group's political aims in his broadcast. For their part, the Foreign and Commonwealth Office contacts the embassies of Algeria, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Syria, and Qatar to ask if their ambassadors would speak to the hostage takers, but the Jordanian ambassador immediately refuses and the rest say that they must ask their governments first. That night the BBC broadcasts Oan's statement, but only succeeds in angering Oan who believes that the statement was cut short and incorrect. Next door, the embassy caretaker briefs the SAS on the physical construction of the embassy. He informs them that the main door is reinforced by a steel security door, and that the ground floor and second floor windows are fitted with armored glass- ironically on recommendation by the SAS themselves years ago. Their plan to penetrate the embassy via the front door and ground-floor windows is quickly scrapped, and alternatives are brainstormed. At 0600 hours of the 3rdof May, Oan contacts the police over the field telephone. He is angry because of the BBC's incorrect reporting of his demands, and accuses the police of deceiving him. He demands to speak with an Arab ambassador, but the police negotiator on the other end lies and says that talks are still being arranged. Oan catches on to the negotiator's delaying tactic and tells him that now the British hostages will be the last to be released. He then demands to speak to Tony Crabb again or he will kill a hostage. Crabb doesn't arrive at the embassy until 1530 hours, almost ten hours after Oan demanded his presence, which angers both Oan and the police outside. Oan relays another statement to be broadcast to Crabb, threatening violence if this one is not accurately relayed- and the police agree to allow the statement to be broadcast if two more hostages are released. Agreeing, Oan allows the hostages to pick who will be released, and they decide on Hiyech Kanji, who is pregnant, and Ali-Guil Ghanzafar- picked only because his loud snoring makes it hard for the other hostages to sleep at night and irritates the terrorists. That night, under the cover of darkness the SAS assault teams reconnoitre the roof of the embassy and manage to discover a skylight which they succeed in unlocking. Should an assault be necessary, it will be used as a point of entry, though ropes are also attached to the building's chimneys so that soldiers can abseil down the side of the building and gain entry through the windows if necessary. The next day, May 4th, the Foreign Office continues to hold talks with various diplomats from Arab countries, hoping to persuade at least one of them to go speak to the hostage-takers. The diplomats insist that they must be able to offer the men safe passage out of the UK, as they believe this will be the only way to guarantee a peaceful outcome, but the British government is firm in stating that safe passage will not be considered under any circumstances. Doing so would only embolden future terrorists. Ultimately the talks end in a stalemate and no diplomat is sent to the embassy. Inside, Police Constable Lock has refused to remove his jacket this entire time, telling the gunmen that he must maintain the appearance of a police officer for the morale of the other hostages. In truth, he does not want to give away the presence of his concealed firearm, and thus has also refused to eat any food- fearful that if he has to use the bathroom then the guard sent with him may catch a glimpse of the concealed gun. One of the hostages though is becoming increasingly feverish, and the gunmen begin to grow suspicious that the food the police are sending in has been spiked with a chemical agent. It hasn't, but in fact the police had considered exactly that, even going so far as to consult a doctor. Ultimately though the idea is dismissed as impractical. Next door, the SAS commanders continue to refine their plans for an assault on the embassy, aided by intelligence gathered from the surveillance devices they've successfully planted in the walls. Early on the morning of May 5th, day six of the siege, Oan wakes up Constable Lock, convinced that an intruder has entered the embassy. Accompanied by a gunman, Lock is sent to investigate the building but discovers nothing. Oan however is only growing more suspicious, and summons Lock again to examine a bulge on the wall separating the Iranian embassy from the Ethiopian embassy next door. The bulge is in fact the result of the removal of bricks on the other side to allow the SAS techs to break through the wall and implant their listening devices, which weakened the wall and caused it to sag slightly. Oan is convinced that the police are planning to break through the wall, but Lock does his best to assure Oan that no assault is forthcoming. Nonetheless, the suspicious Oan moves all the male hostages to a different room down the hall, away from the bulge. With tensions mounting, at 1300 hours Oan calls the police through the landline and tells the police that he will kill a hostage unless he speaks to an Arab ambassador in 45 minutes. The British government is still adamant that it will not allow a diplomat to offer safe passage out of Britain to the hostage-takers, and thus forty minutes later when no ambassador has shown up, Oan calls the police back to tell them that he has taken Abbas Lavasani, the embassy's chief press officer, downstairs and is preparing to execute him. Lavasani had been a devout believer in the Iranian Revolution, and a staunch supporter of the Shah- throughout the course of the siege he has butted heads with the hostage takers repeatedly and even provoked them. As Constable Lock would later recount, “if they were going to kill a hostage, Lavasani wanted it to be him.” At exactly 1345 hours Lavasani got his wish as three shots were heard from inside the embassy. With one hostage dead, the British government decides that the time to act is now. The SAS commander informs Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw that he should expect up to 40 percent casualties amongst the hostages in an assault, forcing Whitelaw to reconsider. Ultimately though he instructs the SAS to immediately prepare to assault the embassy at short notice, and by 1700 hours the SAS assault teams are in position to begin an assault with ten minutes' notice. The police meanwhile have recruited a local imam to speak to the gunmen. The conversation however goes south quickly as Oan grows increasingly agitated and suddenly three more gunshots are heard from inside the embassy. Oan tells the imam that another hostage has been killed, and that all the rest would be killed in thirty minutes if his demands were not met. A few minutes later, Lavasani's body is dumped out the front door, but upon examination by a forensic pathologist it's estimated that Lavasani has been dead for at least an hour. This leads the police to assume that a second hostage has indeed been killed, though in fact only Lavasani had been shot- the shooting while on the phone with the imam had been a bluff. Metropolitan Police commissioner Sir David McNee immediately contacts the Home Secretary and requests approval to hand control of the operation over to the British Army, and his request is relayed to Prime Minister Thatcher who consents. At 1907 hours official control over the operation is handed over to SAS commander Lieutenant-Colonel Rose, who is authorized to begin an assault at his discretion. As police negotiators contact Oan and begin to offer various concessions in a bid to buy time, the SAS teams prepare for the assault. Split into two teams- Red Team and Blue Team- one will abseil from the roof along the rear of the building and enter through the third story windows, while the other team will enter through the skylight. At 1923 hours the go-word is broadcast, and a four-man team begins to abseil from the roof while a second team opens the skylight to drop a stun grenade below. Yet the assault immediately goes awry as the staff sergeant leading the abseiling team is caught up in his own rope. This delays the second team as another soldier tries to help the staff sergeant out of his rope, and in the struggle accidentally smashes a window with his foot. Inside the embassy, the sound of the breaking window alerts the gunmen who are on the second floor, and Oan and a few others move to investigate. The soldiers can't use their breaching charges on the windows anymore for fear of injuring the trapped staff sergeant, and instead kick and smash their way in through the windows. As the first three soldiers enter through the windows though, a fire starts which quickly races up the curtains and out of one of the windows, severely burning the trapped staff sergeant. As a second wave of abseilers move down the side of the building, one of the men cut the staff sergeant free who falls to the balcony below, burnt but still able to continue the fight, he joins the rest of his men inside the embassy. Lagging slightly behind Red Team's assault on the rear third floor windows, Blue Team detonates explosives on a first-floor window and quickly gains entry. One of the hostages, Sim Harris, had run into the room Blue Team penetrated through and is quickly moved out the window and to safety. Inside the second floor of the embassy, Oan whirls on the attacking soldiers and raises his submachine gun, but Constable Lock tackles Oan and drags him to the floor. Still armed, Oan is then shot dead by one of the commandos. At the same time, more assault teams are entering the embassy through the rear door, blown off its hinges with breaching charges. The assault teams below clear the ground floor and the cellar without incident, while upstairs the team on the third floor exchanges fire with two of the gunmen, fatally wounding both. A third gunman produces a grenade and prepares to throw it into a group of hostages- only for Sergeant Tommy Palmer to immediately kill the gunman before he can toss the grenade. In the chaos, hostages begin to be rounded up, and within minutes all firing has ceased- yet the commandos know that not all of the hostage takers have been eliminated. Not taking any chances, the SAS teams begin roughly moving hostages down the stairs and towards the back door of the embassy- but some of the hostages quickly identify one of the hostage takers trying to hide amongst them. His ruse up, the hostage takers produces a grenade, and one of the soldiers immediately shoves him down a set of stairs only to be shot dead by two other soldiers waiting at the bottom. In just seventeen minutes, the raid is over and all but one terrorist has been killed. The remaining terrorist tries to hide amongst the hostages but is quickly identified as the hostages are all restrained in the embassy's back garden until they can be identified. For their part, the terrorists have killed one hostage and seriously wounded two others, but the operation is a major success. Iran quickly sends Britain its thanks for their actions in preserving the lives of their diplomats, and declares the two dead hostages as martyrs for the Iranian Revolution. For his heroism, Police Constable Trevor Lock is awarded the George Medal, the United Kingdom's second-highest civil honor, as well as being honored with the Freedom of the City of London, a rare award typically reserved for royalty or heads of state. For his tackling of Oan during the raid, he also earns a motion honoring him in the House of Commons. The SAS is widely lauded for their success in the raid, but also draws heavy criticism when it was revealed that the hostages had persuaded two of the gunmen to surrender, and tv footage appeared to show them throwing their weapons out a window and holding a white flag. Two SAS soldiers who had killed the men both stated during an inquest that they believed the men had been reaching for weapons before being shot, and ultimately the jury reached the verdict that the soldiers' actions were justifiable homicide. The SAS however drew even more heat when it was later revealed that the only surviving gunman, Fowzi Nejad, had been dragged away by an SAS trooper who had planned to take him back into the building and shoot him. The soldier had reportedly only changed his mind when he was told that the raid was being broadcast on live television. Though the raid was a success, questions over the use of force employed by the SAS soldiers haunted the elite unit for years to come. SAS operators, and their brethren across the world, are meant to be elite instruments of surgical violence, not agents of revenge, and though facing incredible danger, must still keep a calm and collected head and not overuse force when it isn't warranted. The actions of Police Constable Trevor Lock, who had been armed the whole time and yet had only drawn his weapon when he tackled Oan, have often been used as a comparison point to what many see as the overuse of force by the SAS troopers. In the end, though the operation was a huge success, it is a stained victory for Britain's elite Special Air Service. If you found this story interesting, check out our other video: Can Russia Invade Europe? See you next time!
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Channel: The Infographics Show
Views: 2,144,059
Rating: 4.7609963 out of 5
Keywords: nimrod, iran, iranian, country, history, operation, education, educational, infographics show, the infographics show, animation, animated, Iranian Embassy Siege, animated history, united kingdom, uk, british, britain, embassy, siege, operation nimrod, SAS, elite force
Id: O-cKvhA9ZJ4
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Length: 20min 19sec (1219 seconds)
Published: Sat Apr 20 2019
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