The Siege: A Six-Day Hostage Crisis and the Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked the World

As the American hostage crisis in Iran boiled into its seventh month in the spring of 1980, six heavily armed gunman barged into the Iranian embassy in London, taking twenty-six hostages. What followed over the next six days was an increasingly tense standoff that threatened at any moment to spill into a bloodbath. As police negotiators pressed the gunmen, rival protestors clashed violently outside the embassy, and as MI6 and the CIA scrambled for intelligence, Britain’s special forces strike team, the SAS, laid plans for a dangerous rescue mission. In The Siege, Ben Macintyre takes readers minute-by-thrilling-minute through an event that would echo across the next two decades. Drawing on exclusive interviews and a wealth of never-before-seen files, Macintyre reconstructs a week in which every day minted a new hero and every second spelled the potential for doom.

Join New America's Future Security Program as they welcome Ben Macintyre, author of The Siege: A Six-Day Hostage Crisis and the Daring Special-Forces Operation That Shocked the World. Macintyre is a writer-at-large for The Times (UK) and the bestselling author of Agent Sonya, The Spy and the Traitor, A Spy Among Friends, Double Cross, Operation Mincemeat, Agent Zigzag, Rogue Heroes, and Prisoners of the Castle, among other books. Macintyre has also written and presented BBC documentaries of his work. The conversation will be moderated by New America Vice President and Arizona State University Professor of Practice Peter Bergen.

Join the conversation online using #TheSiege and following @NewAmericaISP.

PARTICIPANTS

Ben Macintryre
Author, The Siege
Writer-at-Large, The Times

MODERATOR

Peter Bergen
Vice President, New America
Co-Director, Future Security
Professor of Practice, Arizona State University