Book: The Siege
Author: Ben MacIntyre
Date: 1/13/25
Pages: 551
I chose this book because I was reading about the British SAS (Special Air Service) and this book covers their first mission within the borders of the UK and what ultimately revealed their existence. Until that point, they operated outside of the UK and were kept somewhat secret.
In this book, six Iranians of Arab descent attacked the Iranian embassy in London on April 30, 1980 in order to draw attention to Arabs who were residing in Iran. The terrorists took 22 hostages of various nationalities, primarily British & Iranian. This happened during the time period that the US Embassy hostages were still in captivity in Tehran. After six days of negotiation, with only three hostages released, Margaret Thatcher approved the SAS to take the embassy by force. During the raid only 1 terrorist & 17 of the remaining hostages survived. One hostage was killed by the terrorists and one was mistakenly killed by the SAS. This help to cement Prime Minister Thatcher’s reputation as “The Iron Lady.”
I learned the following in this book:
1) Khuzestan is a province in Iran inhabited by Arabs, as opposed to Persians. It is on the western border of Iran next to Iraq and very close to Kuwait. Arabs are not a recognized minority in Iran, which was one of the reasons for the attack on the Iranian embassy.
2) All the Arab terrorists were trained in Iraq by Saddam Hussein. The embassy attack ultimately led to a war between Iran & Iraq and in a convaluted way, the 9/11 attacks in the USA.
3) Lima Syndrome is exactly the opposite of Stockholm Syndrome. In the latter, hostages bond with their captors. In the former, the captors bond with the hostages and have a hard time killing them.
I learned the following that will increase my prospects for success after prison:
1) Just as the SAS has a detailed plan for conducting an operation, I need to have an operational plan to follow for getting out and staying out of prison. The closest thing to this for me is my Release Plan.
2) I need to be extremely disciplined, as disciplined as an SAS operator, to ensure that I am doing all that that is necessary to get out of prison as soon as possible, and stay out afterwards.
3) I need to start being disciplined now so that I can turn this into a habit now (even in the face of other prisoners who do not understand what I am doing) that can continue on during the rest of my term and after my release.
