A new movie, “6 Days,” effectively recounts the true story of how Britain retook the Iranian embassy in London from terrorists, at the same time the U.S. hostage crisis was underway in Tehran.
The movie begins on April 30, 1980, when six Iranian-Arab separatists seize 26 hostages at Iran’s embassy. Over the course of the movie we learn that the terrorists are supported by Saddam Hussein and seeking an independent state in southern Iran. Yet “6 Days,” rightly, isn’t focused on Iranian politics, but rather on those who shaped the story of the siege: their number includes a police negotiator, a BBC reporter, the terrorist leader, and a British special forces team leader.
The movie is quick to get going. As soon as it becomes clear that Iran’s embassy has been taken, the British government orders the Army’s Special Air Service (SAS) special forces unit to the scene. The soldiers establish a staging post and begin meticulous planning on how to retake the embassy. The soldiers learn the faces of the terrorists and hostages, and run repeated “kill house” training assaults in a crude mockup of the embassy. Here, unlike many terrorism-focused movies, “6 Days” takes us inside the particular complexities of how special forces units prepare to resolve a hostage crisis.
We also see how politics affects the decision to use force. While the SAS offer various options to their political masters, the politicians remain reluctant to authorize an assault.
Simultaneously, we see the police negotiator slowly winning the trust of the terrorists. But a sticking point keeps rearing its head: Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher refuses to accede to the terrorists demands that they be allowed safe passage out of the U.K., and the negotiations become deadlocked. These very well-acted scenes cultivate our attention to the terrorists’ growing exhaustion and stress-induced emotion. We sense what is coming.
Finally, the terrorists snap, executing an Iranian hostage and preparing to kill the others.
Thatcher decides to employ the SAS, and its operators stage at various points around the building.
“Go! Go! Go!” shouts the SAS major.
What follows is a gritty action sequence as the SAS battle the terrorists for control of the building. Interspersing real-life news footage with their battle scenes, the filmmakers remind us that war is neither pretty nor clean. One SAS operator is badly burned after being caught in a rappel line above an alight curtain, and some doors are jammed shut and cannot be breached. As we watch the operators move through the darkened embassy, the terrorists are eventually found, shot, and killed.
Then it’s over; all but one of the hostages are rescued, five terrorists are dead and one is captured. We’re grateful, but not gleeful.
Coming down off their adrenaline, the operators share a few smiles and cigarettes and head back to base.
Nevertheless, “6 Days” isn’t just an excellent movie simply for its historical accuracy and careful, non-glamorized depiction of hostage rescue. It’s an important movie in that it speaks to a watershed moment in counter-terrorism history. After all, until the SAS raid, Western Europe had spent over 15 years as an ideal place for terrorists to seize hostages and extract concessions. Thatcher’s decision changed that reality by presenting Britain as a very poor place to do hostage-taking terrorist business.
And to this day, the SAS’s excellent reputation, as forged at the embassy, defines its reputation around the world.
