OPERATION NIMROD THE IRANIAN EMBASSY SIEGE MAY 1980
Terrorists take over a London embassy and seize hostages – beginning one of the most famous operations in SAS history
At 11:30am on 30 April 1980, six armed men stormed the Iranian Embassy in South Kensington, in the heart of London. They were members of an Iranian Arab terrorist group calling for national sovereignty in the Khuzestan province. While three people managed to escape, two out of a ground floor window and one across a first-floor parapet, the terrorists took 26 hostages and demanded the release of Arab prisoners, as well as safe passage out of the UK.
The government refused the terrorists’ demands and a siege ensued. With crowds of journalists and a live television crew assembled outside the building, it was to become one of the mostpublicised events of all time, with the SAS firmly placed in the spotlight.
On the evening of 3 May an SAS team met on the roof of the embassy, unlocked a skylight and attached ropes to the chimneys in preparation to enter the building. Two days later, Oan
Ali Mohammed, the terrorist group’s leader, threatened to kill a hostage if he was not allowed to speak with an Arab ambassador within 45 minutes. After this time passed, three shots were heard. Later that day a dead body was dumped outside the front door.
That evening, at around 19:23, the SAS split into four-man teams and silently approached different entry points on the five floors, from the basement to roof. Once in position, they were to place specially shaped frame charges on the windows and doors to gain entry to the embassy. Four men abseiled from the roof down the back of the building, but in the process one became tangled in his rope and another accidentally smashed a window while trying to free him, alerting the terrorists. Meanwhile, another team on the roof opened the skylight and threw a stun grenade down, which shook the building upon detonation. The smoke caused confusion and panic inside the embassy.
Within minutes, four of the six terrorists had been shot and killed, and the hostages were being rapidly evacuated down the stairs of the embassy. One of the terrorists, known as Faisal, was spotted among the hostages, with a grenade gripped in his hand. He was shot and killed. In total, five of the six terrorists had been killed and one of the hostages had been executed during the assault, while two SAS men had also been wounded.
“IT WAS TO BECOME ONE OF THE MOST-PUBLICISED EVENTS OF ALL TIME, WITH THE SAS FIRMLY PLACED IN THE SPOTLIGHT”
Fifteen years after the start of the conflict known as the ‘Troubles’ in Northern Ireland, the East Tyrone Brigade of the Provisional IRA had become one of its deadliest units. In the fields and villages of its rural heartland it carried out attacks on Army patrols and off-duty members of the security forces seemingly at will. Then, in the mid-1980s, Provisional high command – its seven-man Army Council – gave the go-ahead for a bold new strategy they hoped would change the face of the undeclared war in Northern Ireland. This was the so-called ‘liberated zone’ campaign. The plan was to destroy isolated Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) stations and then stop them being rebuilt by threatening building contractors. This would force the security forces to abandon large swathes of the border regions and effectively hand control to the terrorists.
Led by Patrick Kelly – the head of the East
Tyrone Brigade – the IRA first struck Ballygawley RUC station on the evening of 7 December 1985, just as the five officers inside were shutting up shop for the night. Two constables, William Clements and George Gilliland, were shot dead and the other three were injured when the IRA blew the building up. The following year it was the turn of The Birches station to be destroyed. Targeting civilian contractors to stop them rebuilding the bases, an IRA hit squad arrived at the home of 52-year-old construction boss Harold Henry at 11pm on the night of 21 April 1987. Henry was shot dead in front of his family.
In response to this and other killings, the British Government tasked the Special Air Service with stopping the Provisionals. However, this was easier said than done. The SAS had been on the ground in Northern Ireland since 1976 and knew just how hard it was to operate there. First and foremost there was a lack of intelligence. The terrorists lived in close-knit rural communities where secrecy was second nature, and where the Active Service Units (ASUS) they were targeting used sophisticated antidetection techniques. But the SAS were patient. Working alongside RUC Special Branch, the covert operators of the Army’s 14 Intelligence Company and the local battalion of the Ulster Defence Regiment (UDR), the SAS prepared to strike back at the Provisional IRA.
Their opportunity came on the night of Friday 8 May 1987 in the quiet village of Loughgall. As the locals settled down for the evening, eight terrorists appeared in a stolen Hiace van and a JCB digger with a bomb in the bucket. Heavily armed, the men raked the RUC station with gunfire and lit the bomb fuse, only to be met by a storm of gunfire from well over a dozen hidden SAS men. All eight terrorists were killed. It was the IRA’S biggest single loss since 1921. For the SAS it was a huge success, and one from which the East Tyrone IRA never recovered.