Iranian Embassy siege

There is two things.

One is a fantastic series, which I'm also a producer on, but I also play the Iranian ambassador on something called the Siege Channel 4 about the Iranian embassy siege of 1980 when they

cut

the Alex Higgins, Cliff Thorburn, Snooker final to another embassy.

It's a great marketing thing for us 'cause, uh, 'cause the, the British government did it for us.

But the pictures from the Iranian embassy siege-

Yeah

... of, of the SAS troopers-

And if you want more Ben, we got plenty of it.

Let me point you in the direction of an episode we did with him a couple years ago about the Iranian embassy siege in London we recorded on the spot where it happened in Kensington.

We've added a link in the show notes.

Thank you very much for listening.

There's a long-standing myth in British culture that the way you get recruited for British intelligence is that you get tapped on the shoulder in your final year of university.

The thing about that story is that it's not a myth, it's true.

Journalism has been in and is probably still going through a major crisis.

So we need to talk about your new book.

It is completely secret.

It's not.

This is Storyco, the podcast about the business of story and storytelling.

I'm James Kirkham.

But Emil's wife Nan and her brother informed the FBI, who turned up in force a few days later.

a fierce gun battle resulted in the deaths of three innocent workers and one fbi agent who was shot dead by gang member babyface nelson amazingly the entire gang managed to escape but dillinger's triumph was short-lived in july as he and his girlfriend left the biograph cinema in lincoln park chicago he was ambushed by the fbi and shot dead in the street This was Operation Nimrod, the storming of the Iranian embassy in London in 1980 by the British Special Air Service in an attempt to end a siege orchestrated by the Democratic Revolutionary Movement for the Liberation of Arabistan, the group's name for the oil-rich Iranian province of Khuzestan.

Six members of the DRMLA, protesting against the regime of Ayatollah Khomeini, had taken over the building six days earlier, on 30 April 1980.

But the event had only escalated into a military operation when they killed one of the 26 hostages, press attache Abbas Lavassani, and threw his body outside.

Convicted for his role in the siege, he was sentenced to life imprisonment, becoming eligible for parole in 2005.

Due to the possibility of him being tortured or executed if deported to Iran, the British government was faced with the ironic situation of possibly being forced to grant him political asylum.

On the whole, though, Operation Nimrod was judged a success, at least until stories surfaced about hostage-takers surrendering and still being shot by SAS soldiers.

Significantly, the entire incident was captured on live television, with the BBC even interrupting coverage of the World Snooker Championships to cover the unfolding crisis, and reporter Kate Adie catapulting herself to media fame by reporting unscripted from behind a car door for 45 minutes in one of the longest-ever live-to-air news flashes.