Heroes and Villains

Then the shooting started.

[gunshots] There was a sense of comfort when the shooting started, a sense we've engaged.

That was just after 7:20 PM on the evening of May the 5th, 1980 at number 16 Prince's Gate in London.

Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had given the order to the SAS to storm the Iranian embassy because six armed Arab-Iranian separatists had burst in, seized staff and visitors, and instantly transformed a quiet diplomatic street into a corner of global crisis.

Television cameras rolled continuously as negotiators struggled to find a deal.

The militants demanded independence for an oil-rich Arab region of Iran.

Tehran's government said no, so they murdered a hostage and set off a chain reaction that would kill them.

[explosion] A hostage was assassinated by terrorists just 20 minutes earlier, so the home secretary gave the soldiers authority to take action.

Why the SAS? Counter-terrorism traditionally falls to the police and security services.

But by 1980, the Special Air Service had become the world's only military unit to specialize in hostage rescue.

I had no alternative therefore but with the approval of the home secretary for the SAS to take action.

The order to storm the embassy was six days in coming, but its effects have been felt for years, up to today.

It was a very good day and a very bad day all at the same time.

David was an SAS soldier in his early 20s when he got the call to deploy in London in the counter-terror team.

[laughs] The way that all happened, uh, we, we'd only been on the team f- I was, I think it was my third time on the team, and I was a team sniper.

So I had a, I was multitasked.

I g- I was a sniper, um, as a primary role, and secondary role, I was, I could join the assault team in any, any areas of, where required to support the assault, which I did actually on the embassy.

And I was based at that time, 'cause we're doing the extra training, so I was actually down in Ashford doing some what they call methods of entry training when the, uh, pagers went off.

[pager beeping]

The three Arab gunmen holding 20 hostages in the Iranian embassy in London have had their demands turned down by Iran.

So we weren't actually far from London, but we were told to sit and wait.

So we were sitting down there, calling up Hereford saying, "Can we come up? Can we come up?" And everybody in Hereford was getting together, getting together, all these things we'd rehearsed.

The SAS is based just outside Hereford in a camp called Stirling Lines.

It's named after their founder, David Stirling.

We'd been preparing for this time, for the potential.