ARGO: WHAT A LOAD OF YANK! Brit diplomat who REALLY saved U.S. Iran embassy hostages slams Ben Affleck’s Oscar-winning film

In 1979, a gang of Islamist students and militants stormed the U.S. Embassy in Tehran, taking 52 people hostage and sparking a crisis that lasted for 444 days.

Argo, named Best Picture at last month’s Academy Awards, tells how six Yank diplomats escaped thanks to a cunning CIA plan, after they’d apparently been turned away at the British Embassy.

But Martin, now 71, has been so infuriated he has been moved to tell the real story for the first time.

Evaded

BEN Affleck’s Oscar-winning film has been dismissed as “completely inaccurate” for showing the Brits as callous deserters who refused to help during the Iran Hostage Crisis.

Speaking about his role in the crisis for the first time Martin Williams, who was British envoy in the capital Tehran at the time, reveals if it wasn’t for him and his little Austin Maxi rescuing escaped Americans they would have all died.

He said: “I was told several people had evaded capture and I should go and find them.

“I set off in my dusty orange Maxi, it was the only one in Iran and had a prominent GB sticker on the back.”

The stray Americans were found and along with fellow Brit Gordon Pirie, Martin now had to get them to safety.

He said: “We discovered there were five of them, three men and two women.

“They got into our cars in a state of anxiety. They wanted to duck down in the cars but I argued against that.

“The car was so small they’d have been spotted, it would have been tricky at a roadblock, too.

“The safest thing to do was to take them to my home on the British Embassy compound. I knew that serious danger faced us getting there.

“I didn’t want to be caught with people considered fugitives. We could have been arrested as spies. It was a life or death situation.

“We managed to avoid the armed roadblocks, we were lucky not to be stopped and there was a great deal of relief when we reached the compound.”

Safe

But the adventure wasn’t over, the Birtish Embassy had also been overrun and hundreds of Iranian staff meant the Yanks still weren’t safe.

Later on, the Brits again moved the Americans, this time to the home of a senior diplomat at the Canadian Embassy, from where they were smuggled out of the country.

And even when the Brits weren’t in direct contact with their American allies, they still provided them with food, magazines and toiletries, says Martin.

He added: “You can image how upset I was by the film’s inaccurate representation, albeit in a throwaway line, that the British failed to offer shelter or support. I don’t think they needed to do that.

“It would have been fairer to have stated we provided initial assistance, or even to say nothing at all. The crucial initial assistance we provided was known to very few of our diplomatic colleagues, and neither the Americans nor ourselves made it public.

“We decided to keep quiet at the time because it would have made it difficult for our Embassy to continue working with the Iranians.

“So what prompted Ben Affleck and his people, including producer George Clooney, to portray the Brits in such a derogatory way, I don’t know. If the film had portrayed what we did, it might have added even more dramatic tension. It was gratuitous, insensitive and completely inaccurate.

“The truth is very different, and I think it only right to get the correct information out to the public.”