The SAS Raid That Changed Live Television

In 1980, Britain watched a hostage rescue unfold live on television. The Iranian Embassy siege began when six armed members of the Democratic Revolutionary Front for the Liberation of Arabistan entered the Iranian Embassy in London and took 26 people hostage. Six days later, after a hostage was killed, the British government ordered the SAS to launch Operation Nimrod. The raid lasted about 17 minutes. It freed 19 hostages, killed five of the six gunmen, and made the SAS visible to the British public in a way it had never been before. But this was not a clean action movie. It was a hostage crisis, a police negotiation, a military operation, a media event, and a national memory all at once. Welcome to History That Matters. #HistoryThatMatters #OperationNimrod #SAS #BritishHistory #HistoryDocumentary