Forty-one-year-old Police Constable Trevor Lock was at his usual post, guarding the Iranian embassy in London, on the morning of April 30, 1980. At 11.36 he noticed a young man whom he took to be “another Iranian student” approaching the building. “Then”, writes Ben Macintyre, “he saw the sub-machine gun.”
The “student” fired a round that shattered the half-open glass security door and lacerated PC Lock’s face. Joined by two other armed men, he rushed inside, and soon three more armed confederates arrived. Thus begins Macintyre’s perfectly paced and thrilling account of the six-day standoff between the British government and young zealots seeking justice for their fellow Arabs in the Iranian province that they called Arabistan and Persians knew as Khuzestan. Thirty-one people – diplomats, local staff, journalists and visa applicants – were in the building when the gang began rounding them up and threatening their lives. Five managed to escape in the initial confusion, leaving twenty-six as hostages to be bargained against ninety-one political prisoners in Iran. The new Islamic government in Iran refused to consider making concessions, and Margaret Thatcher’s year-old administration would not grant the terrorists safe passage out of the country with their hostages.
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