Operation Nimrod: How the SAS Ended the Iranian Embassy Siege

For Trevor Locke, Wednesday the 30th of April began like any other day. A police officer with London’s Metropolitan Police Force, Locke had been assigned to Diplomatic Protection Duty at the Iranian Embassy, and he could hardly believe his luck. Days once spent chasing criminals through London’s dirty streets, occasionally getting ten bells beaten out of him, were now spent in a marble-clad foyer where the greatest stress of the morning was deciding which coffee he fancied from the embassy’s barista.

That luck would not last. At 11:30am, the once calm and placid surrounds of the embassy became the scene of the single most tense situation of Locke’s entire career. The public entrance was smashed open by a mighty kick, and in poured six armed men, stacked with machine guns and grenades. Five of them immediately fanned out, forcing everyone present back from the door at muzzle point. The sixth, the group’s leader, pointed his own machine gun at the ceiling and emptied an entire magazine into it.

In the seconds it took that scene to unfold, Locke faced a burning dilemma. Tucked out of sight under his shirt was a revolver, primed with six rounds — one for each gunman. Should he try to drop them, or play it cool? The gunmen answered the question for him: Locke soon had a machine gun pressed to his temple and a clear instruction barked in his ear — “hands up or die.”

He complied, but not before he subtly shifted to bury the revolver in the folds of his uniform. The move was clever: he passed a hasty pat-down undetected and was herded into the heart of the building with the rest of the hostages, weapon still on his person.

This is the story of the six days that followed, and of the 17 minutes that ended them.

Six Armed Men and 26 Hostages

It had taken only minutes for the gunmen to secure the embassy from top to bottom. Twenty-six hostages were now at their mercy, Locke among them. The atmosphere was immediately tense, in no small part because of the skittish nature of some of the captors. One of them, despite having all 26 hostages clearly subdued, took to strolling through the silent crowd, shoving a grenade in their faces and removing and replacing the pin, over and over, screaming violent threats all the while.

What the gunmen wanted was made plain almost at once. The group’s leader — Oan Ali Mohammed, better known by his callsign “Salim” — gave an interview to the BBC immediately after taking the building. Asked why he had taken hostages, Salim replied that the group had demands: the freeing of 91 prisoners. Pressed on whether he wanted 91 prisoners in Iran set free, he confirmed it, describing them as a group fighting for their legitimate rights, justice, and the autonomy of Arabistan.

By “Arabistan,” Salim meant Khūzestān, a western province of Iran with a sizeable Arab population. His organisation, the Democratic Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Arabistan, wanted to carve it into an independent state. The siege in London was, in their eyes, the lever to force that ambition forward.

The Decision to Hold the SAS in Reserve

The police had been alerted the instant the embassy was seized, via silent alarm, and they responded at once, dispatching their counter-terror team under the command of Deputy Assistant Commissioner John Dellow. This was no weak body of men. It was composed of officers, many of them military veterans, all with access to the best training and equipment the Metropolitan Police could muster.

Even so, the men at the top harboured doubts. Richard Hasty Smith, Chair of the Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms — COBR, the British Government’s crisis co-ordination centre — and Francis Pym, Secretary of State for Defence, were not convinced the police could rescue the hostages by force. The threat was simply too unprecedented and too great.

So they searched their minds for a more suitable group to hand the operation to — men with a proven record of succeeding against insurmountable odds. They found such men 150 miles to the west, in the historic little city of Hereford. There sat a small, unassuming military installation called Bradbury Lines, the garrison of an outfit most readers will have heard of: the Special Air Service. Ultimately, it would fall to the SAS to bring the situation under control.

The Calm Before the Storm

At that time, 22 SAS’s B Squadron had only just been assigned to Counter Terrorism duties, having finished a stint overseas in a classified place, doing something classified. Such an assignment was usually welcome: it meant several months UK-based, with the luxury of actually seeing one’s family from time to time and, with luck, even a social life at the weekend. So as the troopers scrambled for their gear and sped down the motorway towards London, tachometers bouncing off the redline, the prevailing mood was annoyance — weekend leave had just been cancelled.

But professionalism is the one quality an SAS trooper cannot do without, so the men buried their irritation and steeled themselves for the task. On arrival, their first port of call was an Immediate Action plan — a hastily assembled scheme that could be triggered at a moment’s notice, should the situation collapse before a proper assault could be organised.

From there they gathered intelligence and built their actual plan. They studied the building’s floor plans and quizzed anyone they could find who knew its layout. The troopers wanted such intimate knowledge of the building’s shape that, dropped into it blindfolded, they could find their way out without bumping into a single wall. By night, troopers descended on the building to inspect windows, walls and skylights, identifying the best possible points of entry.

Day Six: A Fatal Miscalculation

The standoff dragged on for days. Throughout, Salim believed he held the upper hand. He was convinced the British Government was paralysed by fear and that, so long as he held his hostages, he would eventually get his way. His assessment was dead wrong. In reality, the only reason he still drew breath was the good graces of the British Government, which had a long-standing policy of not escalating hostage situations — provided the perpetrators did not start killing their prisoners.

Unaware of that line, and convinced the government needed only a small nudge to bend the knee, Salim made a fatal miscalculation on day six. He killed a hostage.

The victim was Abbas Lavasani, the embassy’s Chief Press Officer. He was, in Salim’s eyes, an obvious choice. Lavasani was an ardent supporter of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, a conviction he made plain throughout the siege, constantly berating and goading the hostage takers — telling them how wonderful he thought Ayatollah Khomeini was, and how lucky they were as Arabs to live under his rule. Salim had wanted to kill him since day one but had restrained himself to preserve Lavasani’s value as a hostage.

Now that he had resolved to kill someone, Lavasani was out of luck. At exactly 13:45, Lavasani was dragged to the entrance foyer, made to kneel, and shot three times — once in the chest and twice in the head. His body was then dumped out of the front entrance.

The Handover and the Bluff

Salim did not realise it, but he had just signed his own death warrant. Sir David McNee, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, watched the grisly act unfold and immediately requested that the operation be handed to the Army. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher granted the request without a second’s hesitation.

Salim, by contrast, was convinced his act of barbarism had strengthened his hand. He warned the police that the group would kill again — declaring they would kill one hostage after 45 minutes, and that they were “very sorry.” Given that he had now proven himself perfectly willing to murder hostages, the SAS were keen to be inside the embassy before those 45 minutes elapsed. But they needed time to get into position.

So the assault team instructed the police negotiators to feign surrender — to tell Salim that all his demands were being met, that the Iraqi ambassador was on his way, that a plane had been arranged to fly the group out of the country, and that a coach was coming to carry them to it. Salim did not buy it. The atmosphere inside the embassy had shifted, and everyone present — hostages and hostage takers alike — sensed that something was about to happen.

Panicking, Salim tried to head it off. He jammed his machine gun into Locke’s face, marched him to the phone, and forced the officer to negotiate on his behalf, relaying the threat that any attack would see all hostages killed. The negotiator’s reply was that they were merely arranging the coach, the aircraft and the movement of the Iraqi ambassador. It did little to reassure Salim.

He later took the phone himself, telling the negotiators he could hear suspicious movement. Told there was none, he insisted: “There is suspicion. Okay.” Then: “Just a minute.

I’ll come back again; I’m going to check.”

All Hell Breaks Loose

At that very moment, at 7:23pm, as Salim set down the phone and turned to investigate, all hell broke loose. An enormous explosion ripped through the embassy as the roof’s skylights were blown — a move designed both to throw the hostage takers off guard and to open a point of entry. A section of four troopers hurled in a volley of flashbangs, in case gunmen lay in wait, then poured into the building behind the detonation.

The confusion was amplified by Locke himself, who now had his chance to pounce on Salim. In his own account, Locke ran as hard as he could towards the gunman, struck him with his shoulder in the hip, and drove him back maybe eight to ten feet before headbutting him. They were facing the door, Locke recalled. Salim “was going nowhere.”

As that struggle played out, another team was on the front balcony, ordered to blow the windows and breach there. They had meant to fire their charges in sync with the roof team for maximum confusion, but they hit a snag: as they laid the charges, the curtains on the far side of the window were suddenly flung open. On instinct, the trooper not laying charges shouldered his MP5, ready to drop the terrorist he assumed was revealing himself. To his surprise, it was a hostage — Simeon Harris, a BBC sound recorder who had found himself in that room and, hearing movement outside, decided whoever was there was his ticket to freedom.

Fire on the Rear Balcony

Harris’s relief curdled into terror at the sight of the armed man, but he soon refocused on escape and began banging on the window for help. On the other side, the troopers were screaming at him to back away and get behind something solid before they blew the glass — a message muffled by their gas masks and the thick window. Dramatic hand gestures eventually got it across. They blew the window, pulled Harris to safety, and entered the building only a minute or so behind schedule.

A third team made its move at the rear, abseiling down onto the back balcony. They too hit a setback: one trooper got his glove tangled in his rope during the descent. Ordinarily a minor problem — a man down, or a short delay to cut him loose — it now threatened to be fatal, because the balcony curtains had caught fire and the flames were climbing fast toward him.

His comrades watched from below as the flames began to consume him and his screams filled the radio, helpless. Worse, the troopers on the roof could not simply cut him free: he was kicking off the wall to escape the fire, which swung him out over the edge of the balcony and risked a 40-foot drop onto concrete if he was released at the wrong moment. With no other option, the men on the roof waited until he lost his footing, then cut him loose so his own momentum carried him back through the flames and over the balcony, where his mates caught him safely.

Having suffered second-degree burns up his legs, he did not sit out the rest of the operation. He brushed himself off, shouldered his MP5, and rejoined his team. The remaining troopers — the final group on the roof and two more entering through the back doors at ground level — got inside without incident.

Clearing the Building, Room by Room

While the breaches unfolded, Locke was still locked in a furious melee with Salim. The pair wrestled and traded blows for what felt like an eternity. When Salim was momentarily distracted by the approaching troopers, Locke broke free, kicked him back, drew the revolver he had hidden for so long, and pressed it to Salim’s temple. The tables had turned — and Salim did not meet the moment with poise.

He wept and begged, spinning a desperate lie that he had been the moderate voice of calm during the siege, the one who urged surrender. Locke saw straight through it but was a merciful man. Rather than shoot, he put Salim in a headlock, kept the muzzle to his head, and told him to shut up and not move.

By then the assault teams were deep inside, working to a simple but effective method. Having entered in groups of four, they sub-divided into pairs. One pair cleared a room by throwing in flashbangs and storming through with a hail of fire; the other pair then moved past to clear the next room while the first covered the rear. The two pairs leapfrogged through the building until every room was cleared.

The method meant hostages would inevitably get flashbanged, but this was deliberate, not an oversight. The SAS would rather flashbang everyone than no one: if they simply booted doors and stormed in the old-fashioned way, the captors would have a small window to turn their guns on the hostages before being cut down. It was far better, the SAS reasoned, for hostages to be stunned than shot.

The Death of Salim and the Final Gunmen

Moving room by room, the troopers reached Locke, who still had Salim restrained. When the flashbangs rolled in, their detonation threw Locke off guard, and Salim broke free, lunging for his machine gun propped in the corner. He never reached it. Locke seized his wrist, and as he strained to haul him back, the troopers entered and barked a single order: “Trevor, on the floor!”

Locke obeyed instantly. As he hit the ground, the troopers mag-dumped into Salim, killing him at once. His part in the siege over, Locke received a pat on the back and was escorted out via the balcony.

Four more hostage takers died as the SAS pushed on. One was killed quickly: he had tried to fortify himself in a far-off cupboard, intending to ambush the troopers, but a flashbang ruined the plan and he was shot dead while disoriented. Another tried a bolder line, standing tall and waving a hand grenade, announcing he would pull the pin at any funny business. Real life is not a Hollywood film, however: rather than a stand-off, he was simply shoved down the flight of stairs he stood atop, and when he hit the bottom, three troopers emptied their magazines into him — 27 rounds connecting and killing him instantly.

Two more held out in a second-floor room with nine hostages. Realising the SAS were about to breach, they turned their guns on the captives, hitting Ali Akbar Samadzadeh, an embassy staffer, and Ahmad Dadgar, the embassy’s medical advisor. Samadzadeh died immediately; Dadgar, shot six times, miraculously survived. The two gunmen then threw their weapons from the window, knelt with hands on their heads, and awaited their fate, expecting to be taken alive.

But the troopers, seeing Samadzadeh’s lifeless body, put them against the wall and shot them dead.

One Survivor, and the End of the Siege

That left a single terrorist alive. Unlike his comrades, he tried to be clever, blending in among the hostages to slip past the assault. It worked — for a time. But the SAS handcuffed everyone pulled from the scene until every perpetrator could be accounted for, alive or dead.

The gunman made it as far as the embassy’s rear garden before the genuine hostages pointed him out. He had a stroke of luck: as a trooper hauled him up and began pushing him back toward the embassy, the trooper was reminded that hundreds of cameras were trained on the scene. A quick U-turn was made to a nearby police van, and the prisoner was thrown into it, still alive and well.

With that, the siege was over. The SAS withdrew at 19:40 — a mere 17 minutes after they first went in.

A Roaring Success, and a Footnote of Criticism

Operation Nimrod was judged by most a roaring success. A crisis that could have, and by nearly all measures should have, ended in massacre was instead resolved with minimal loss of civilian life. Twenty-three hostages were saved with injuries no worse than some ringing ears from the flashbangs; one survived despite horrific gunshot wounds; and one, tragically, had died — Lavasani, murdered before the assault began.

The operation did prove mildly controversial. The SAS drew a measure of criticism, chiefly over the two hostage takers killed after they had surrendered. Little came of it — some tutting and finger-wagging in a few newspaper opinion columns, and not much more. The government could not have been more pleased with B Squadron. Both the Queen and Margaret Thatcher appeared at the men’s base on the evening of the operation to thank them in person and put their credit cards behind the bar in the mess.

The public, in Britain and abroad, were simply in awe, and the SAS became overnight celebrities. Whatever fame the regiment now enjoys — every veteran who trades on the badge, every business that puns on the initials, every television show and video game that crowbars the SAS into its premise to pull an audience — traces back to Operation Nimrod, and to the permanent imprint its spectacle left on popular culture.