A forgotten Iranian hostage crisis

In 2017, Ben Macintyre wrote Rogue Heroes: The History of the SAS, Britain's Secret Special Forces Unit That Sabotaged the Nazis and Changed the Nature of War. It was a digression from his earlier focus on espionage during World War II and the Cold War.

- KANIKA DATTA

Rogue Heroes chronicled the history of a rag-tag band of irregulars that was raised during the North African campaign during World War II to conduct sabotage operations behind enemy lines. Replete with tales of derring-do, Rogue Heroes was by no means one of Mr. Macintyre's better books. But a hit BBC TV series based on the book has ensured its bestseller status.

His latest offering, The Siege: The Remarkable Story of the Greatest SAS Hostage Drama, can be seen as a brand extension. The Siege is about an Iranian hostage crisis but not the better-known one at the US embassy in Tehran. This one, which took place in the Iranian embassy in London in 1980, partly overlapped that 444-day crisis. The British government's ability to break it after just six days in a sensational 17-minute operation by the SAS contrasted with the embarrassing failure of a rescue mission by a US Special Forces task force, which eventually undermined President Jimmy Carter's administration.

Mr. Macintyre's original aim in writing this book was to showcase the brilliance of the SAS in post-war action. It was through this siege, he writes, that the world came to know all about the SAS, till then a shadowy, little-known outfit; the rescue operation cemented its legends and made it a template for Special Forces around the world, including the US Delta Force.