Day one: 30 April At approximately 11:30 on Wednesday 30 April the six heavily armed members of DRFLA stormed the Iranian Embassy building on Prince's Gate,
South Kensington. The gunmen quickly overpowered
PC Trevor Lock of the
Metropolitan Police's
Diplomatic Protection Group (DPG). Lock was carrying a concealed
Smith & Wesson .38-calibre revolver, but was unable to draw it before he was overpowered, although he did manage to press the "panic button" on his radio. Lock was later frisked, but the gunman conducting the search did not find the constable's weapon. He remained in possession of the revolver, and to keep it concealed he refused to remove his coat, which he told the gunmen was to "preserve his image" as a police officer. The officer also refused offers of food throughout the siege for fear that the weapon would be seen if he had to use the toilet and a gunman decided to escort him. Although the majority of the people in the embassy were captured, three managed to escape—two by climbing out of a ground-floor window and the third by climbing across a first-floor parapet to the Ethiopian Embassy next door. A fourth person, Gholam-Ali Afrouz, the chargé d'affaires and thus most senior Iranian official present, briefly escaped by jumping out of a first-floor window, but was injured in the process and quickly captured. Afrouz and the 25 other hostages were all taken to a room on the second floor. The majority of the hostages were embassy staff, predominantly Iranian nationals, but several British employees were also captured. The other hostages were all visitors, with the exception of Lock, the British police officer guarding the embassy. Afrouz had been appointed to the position less than a year before, his predecessor having been dismissed after the revolution. Abbas Fallahi, who had been a butler before the revolution, was appointed the doorman by Afrouz. One of the British members of staff was Ron Morris, from
Battersea, who had worked for the embassy in various positions since 1947. During the course of the siege, police and journalists established the identities of several other hostages.
Mustapha Karkouti was a journalist covering the crisis at the US Embassy in Tehran and was at the embassy for an interview with Abdul Fazi Ezzati, the cultural attaché. Muhammad Hashir Faruqi was another journalist, at the embassy to interview Afrouz for an article on the Iranian Revolution. Simeon "Sim" Harris and
Chris Cramer, both employees of the BBC, were at the embassy attempting to obtain visas to visit Iran, hoping to cover the aftermath of the 1979 revolution, after several unsuccessful attempts. They found themselves sitting next to Moutaba Mehrnavard, who was there to consult Ahmad Dadgar, the embassy's medical adviser, and Ali Asghar Tabatabai, who was collecting a map for use in a presentation he had been asked to give at the end of a course he had been attending. Police arrived at the embassy almost immediately after the first reports of gunfire, and, within ten minutes, seven DPG officers were on the scene. The officers moved to surround the embassy, but retreated when a gunman appeared at a window and threatened to open fire. Deputy Assistant Commissioner
John Dellow arrived nearly 30 minutes later and took command of the operation. Dellow established a temporary headquarters in his car before moving it to the
Royal School of Needlework further down Prince's Gate and then to 24 Prince's Gate, a nursery school. From his various command posts, Dellow coordinated the police response, including the deployment of
D11, the Metropolitan Police's marksmen, and officers with specialist surveillance equipment. Police negotiators, led by
Max Vernon, made contact with Oan via a
field telephone passed through one of the embassy windows, and were assisted by a negotiator and a psychiatrist. At 15:15 Oan issued the DRFLA's first demand, the release of 91 Arabs held in prisons in Khūzestān, and threatened to blow up the embassy and the hostages if this were not done by noon on 1 May. Large numbers of journalists were on the scene quickly and were moved into a holding area to the west of the front of the embassy, while dozens of Iranian protesters also arrived near the embassy and remained there throughout the siege. A separate police command post was established to contain the protests, which descended into violent confrontations with the police on several occasions. Shortly after the beginning of the crisis, the British government's emergency committee
COBR was assembled. COBR is made up of ministers, civil servants and expert advisers, including representatives from the police and the armed forces. The meeting was chaired by
William Whitelaw, the
Home Secretary, as Margaret Thatcher, the Prime Minister, was unavailable. The Iranian government accused the British and American governments of sponsoring the attack as revenge for the
ongoing siege of the US Embassy in Tehran. Given the lack of co-operation from Iran, Thatcher, kept apprised of the situation by Whitelaw, determined that British law would be applied to the embassy. At 16:30, the gunmen released their first hostage, Frieda Mozaffarian. She had been unwell since the siege began, and Oan had asked for a doctor to be sent into the embassy to treat her, but the police refused. The other hostages deceived Oan into believing that Mozaffarian was pregnant, and Oan eventually released Mozaffarian after her condition deteriorated. , head office of the Royal College of General Practitioners, which was used as a base by the SAS during the siege. Early in the morning of 1 May, the gunmen ordered one of the hostages to telephone the
BBC's news desk. During the call, Oan took the receiver and spoke directly to the BBC journalist. He identified the group to which the gunmen belonged and stated that the non-Iranian hostages would not be harmed, but refused to allow the journalist to speak to any other hostages. At some point during the day, the police disabled the embassy's telephone lines, leaving the hostage-takers just the field telephone for outside communication. His colleague, Sim Harris, was taken to the field telephone to negotiate for a doctor. The police negotiator refused the request, instead telling Harris to persuade Oan to release Cramer. The ensuing negotiations between Harris, Oan, and the police took up most of the morning, and Cramer was eventually released at 11:15. He was rushed to hospital in an ambulance, accompanied by police officers sent to gather information from him. As the deadline of noon approached, set the previous day for the release of the Arab prisoners, the police became convinced that the gunmen did not have the capability to carry out their threat of blowing up the embassy, and persuaded Oan to agree to a new deadline of 14:00. The police allowed the deadline to pass, to no immediate response from the gunmen. During the afternoon, Oan altered his demands, requesting that the British media broadcast a statement of the group's grievances and for ambassadors of three Arab countries to negotiate the group's safe passage out of the UK once the statement had been broadcast. COBR decided to create ambient noise to cover the sound created by the technicians and instructed
British Gas to commence drilling in an adjacent road, supposedly to repair a gas main. The drilling was aborted after it agitated the gunmen, and instead
British Airports Authority, owner of
London Heathrow Airport, was told to instruct approaching aircraft to fly over the embassy at low altitude.
Day three: 2 May At 09:30 on 2 May, Oan appeared at the first-floor window of the embassy to demand access to the
telex system, which the police had disabled along with the telephone lines, and threatened to kill Abdul Fazi Ezzati, the cultural attaché. The police refused and Oan pushed Ezzati, whom he had been holding at gunpoint at the window, across the room, before demanding to speak to somebody from the BBC who knew Sim Harris. The police, relieved to have a demand to which they could easily agree, produced Tony Crabb, managing director of BBC Television News and Harris's boss. Oan shouted his demands—for safe passage out of the UK, to be negotiated by three ambassadors from Arab countries—to Crabb from the first-floor window, and instructed that they should be broadcast along with a statement of the hostage-takers' aims by the BBC. The
Foreign and Commonwealth Office informally approached the embassies of Algeria, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Syria and Qatar to ask if their ambassadors would be willing to talk to the hostage-takers. The Jordanian ambassador immediately refused and the other five said they would consult their governments. The BBC broadcast the statement that evening, but in a form unsatisfactory to Oan, who considered it to be truncated and incorrect. Meanwhile, the police located the embassy caretaker and took him to their forward headquarters to brief the SAS and senior police officers. He informed them that the embassy's front door was reinforced by a steel security door, and that the windows on the ground floor and first floor were fitted with armoured glass, the result of recommendations made after the SAS had been asked to review security arrangements for the embassy several years earlier. Plans for entering the embassy by battering the front door and ground-floor windows were quickly scrapped and work began on other ideas.
Day four: 3 May Oan, angered by the BBC's incorrect reporting of his demands the previous evening, contacted the police negotiators shortly after 06:00 and accused the authorities of deceiving him. He demanded to speak with an Arab ambassador, but the negotiator on duty claimed that talks were still being arranged by the Foreign Office. Recognising the delaying tactic, Oan told the negotiator that the British hostages would be the last to be released because of the British authorities' deceit. He added that a hostage would be killed unless Tony Crabb was brought back to the embassy. Crabb did not arrive at the embassy until 15:30, nearly ten hours after Oan demanded his presence, to the frustration of both Oan and Sim Harris. Oan then relayed another statement to Crabb via Mustapha Karkouti, a journalist also being held hostage in the embassy. The police guaranteed that the statement would be broadcast on the BBC's next news bulletin, in exchange for the release of two hostages. The hostages decided amongst themselves that the two to be released would be Hiyech Kanji and Ali-Guil Ghanzafar; the former as she was pregnant and the latter for no other reason than his loud snoring, which kept the other hostages awake at night and irritated the terrorists. Later in the evening, at approximately 23:00, an SAS team reconnoitred the roof of the embassy. They discovered a skylight, and succeeded in unlocking it for potential use as an access point, should they later be required to storm the building. They also attached ropes to the chimneys to allow soldiers to abseil down the building and gain access through the windows if necessary.
Day five: 4 May During the day, the Foreign Office held further talks with diplomats from Arabian countries in the hope of persuading them to go to the embassy and talk to the hostage-takers. The talks, hosted by
Douglas Hurd, ended in stalemate. The diplomats insisted they must be able to offer safe passage out of the UK for the gunmen, believing this to be the only way to guarantee a peaceful outcome, but the British government was adamant that safe passage would not be considered under any circumstances. Karkouti, through whom Oan had issued his revised demands the previous day, became increasingly ill throughout the day and by the evening was feverish, which led to suggestions that the police had spiked the food that had been sent into the embassy. John Dellow, the commander of the police operation, had apparently considered the idea and even consulted a doctor about its viability, but eventually dismissed it as "impracticable". The SAS officers involved in the operation, including Brigadier
Peter de la Billière,
Director SAS, Rose, and Major Hector Gullan spent the day refining their plans for an assault.
Day six: 5 May Oan woke Lock at dawn, convinced that an intruder was in the embassy. Lock was sent to investigate, but no intruder was found. Later in the morning, Oan called Lock to examine a bulge in the wall separating the Iranian embassy from the Ethiopian embassy next door. The bulge had, in fact, been caused by the removal of bricks to allow an assault team to break through the wall and to implant listening devices, resulting in a weakening of the wall. Although Lock assured him that he did not believe the police were about to storm the building, Oan remained convinced that they were "up to something" and moved the male hostages from the room in which they had spent the last four days to another down the hall. Tensions rose throughout the morning and, at 13:00, Oan told the police that he would kill a hostage unless he was able to speak to an Arab ambassador within 45 minutes. At 13:40, Lock informed the negotiator that the gunmen had taken Abbas Lavasani, the embassy's chief press officer, downstairs and were preparing to execute him. Lavasani, a strong supporter of the 1979
Iranian Revolution, had repeatedly provoked his captors during the siege. According to Lock, Lavasani stated that "if they were going to kill a hostage, [Lavasani] wanted it to be him." At exactly 13:45, 45 minutes after Oan's demand to speak to an ambassador, three shots were heard from inside the embassy. Whitelaw, who had been chairing the COBR crisis meeting during the siege, was rushed back to Whitehall from a function he had been attending in
Slough, roughly away, arriving 19 minutes after the shots had been reported. He was briefed on the SAS plan by de la Billière, who told him to expect that up to 40 percent of the hostages would be killed in an assault. After deliberations, Whitelaw instructed the SAS to prepare to assault the building at short notice, an order that was received by Lieutenant-Colonel Rose at 15:50. By 17:00, the SAS were in a position to assault the embassy at ten minutes' notice. The police negotiators recruited the imam from
Regent's Park Mosque at 18:20, fearing that a "crisis point" had been reached, and asked him to talk to the gunmen. Three further shots were fired during the course of the imam's conversation with Oan. Oan announced that a hostage had been killed, and the rest would die in 30 minutes unless his demands were met. A few minutes later, Lavasani's body was dumped out of the front door. Upon a preliminary examination, conducted at the scene, a forensic pathologist estimated that Lavasani had been dead for at least an hour, meaning he could not have been killed by the three most recent shots, and leading the police to believe that two hostages had been killed. In fact, only Lavasani had been shot. After Lavasani's body had been recovered,
Sir David McNee, Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police, contacted the Home Secretary to request approval to hand control of the operation over to the British Army, under the provisions of
Military Aid to the civil authorities. Whitelaw relayed the request to Thatcher, and the prime minister agreed immediately. Thus John Dellow, the ranking police officer at the embassy, signed over control of the operation to Lieutenant-Colonel Rose at 19:07, authorising Rose to order an assault at his discretion. The signed note is now on display at
New Scotland Yard's Crime Museum. Meanwhile, the police negotiators began stalling Oan. They offered concessions in order to distract him and prevent him killing further hostages, buying time for the SAS to make its final preparations for the now-inevitable assault. ==SAS assault==