The Siege
A Six-Day Hostage Crisis and the Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked the World
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4.2 • 9 Ratings
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- $14.99
Publisher Description
One of Indigo's Top 10 History Books of 2024
A brilliant, seat-of-your-pants hostage-taking and daring SAS rescue mission of the Iran Embassy in London in 1980, this is Ben Macintyre at the very height of his story-telling powers.
On April 30, 1980, six heavily armed gunmen burst into the Iranian embassy on Prince’s Gate, overlooking Hyde Park in London. There, they took 26 hostages, including embassy staff, visitors, and three British citizens. A tense six-day siege ensued—all on television, over a Bank Holiday weekend—in which police negotiators and psychiatrists sought a bloodless end to the standoff, while the SAS laid plans for a daring rescue mission: Operation Nimrod.
This mission marked a fundamental turning point in global history, when Middle Eastern terrorism arrived in the West. Britain had experienced IRA terrorism before, but never an international terrorist incident on this scale. It was a precursor to the brutal Iran-Iraq War that would follow, in which millions perished. Yet there exists to this day no full account of the week-long siege and gripping rescue.
Drawing on interviews with police, hostages, terrorists and key SAS figures, and cutting through the sensationalism and misinformation, bestselling historian Ben Macintyre (author of Sunday Times #1s Colditz, The Spy and the Traitor and SAS: Rogue Heroes) goes deep into the archives with exclusive access to tell the story of what really happened and give the first definitive account of a moment that forever changed the way the nation thought about the SAS—and itself.
APPLE BOOKS REVIEW
We love historian Ben Macintyre’s books about World War II espionage like Operation Mincemeat, but this compelling history of a modern hostage standoff may be his finest work yet. On April 30, 1980, six Arabic men took control of London’s Iranian embassy to protest the rule of Ayatollah Khomeini and call for one Iranian province to become a sovereign Arabic country. The standoff, broadcast live across the UK, transfixed the country and ended up being the first real test for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher’s new government. As always, Macintyre has done an amazing amount of research, and his writing has the rapid-fire pace of a page-turning thriller. Macintyre gives at least as much space to the hostage takers (and the person who turns out to be pulling the strings of their demands) as their captives. This makes The Siege a deeply nuanced take on the ever-shifting alliances of an unstable region and why this incident still resonates through world politics today.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Nerve-wracking menace, unlikely sympathies, and a daring rescue mark this rousing saga of a notorious terrorist incident. Bestseller Macintyre (Agent Sonya) revisits the May 1980 occupation of the Iranian embassy in London by six Iranian Arab terrorists championing the nationalist cause of Iran's ethnic Arab minority. Led by a charismatic, volatile man named Towfiq Ibrahim al-Rashidi, the militants took 26 hostages, demanding the release of 91 Iranian Arab prisoners being held in Iran and an escape plane out of Britain. As negotiations with British police (who never intended to comply) dragged on, al-Rashidi grew increasingly agitated. On the sixth day, after the terrorists executed a hostage, Britain's elite Special Air Service unit staged a spectacular rescue (it was broadcast live), with commandos rappelling down from the roof and smashing through windows. Macintyre's narrative is cinematic in its bloody climax—"He... spray the group indiscriminately, firing in short bursts, back and forth"—and even more so in its tense buildup. He paints the embassy occupation as a psychological pressure cooker, with al-Rashidi veering between solicitude toward the hostages and threats to kill them, while the hostages' attempts to mollify him led to an outbreak of Stockholm syndrome (after the standoff ended, female hostages pretended he was a hostage to protect him). Without demonizing those involved, Macintyre provides a nuanced, perceptive analysis of the intense emotions roiling a high-stakes standoff.
