Botched US raid that led to the hostage crisis

'A failed American attempt to abduct two senior Iranian security officers on an official visit to northern Iraq was the starting pistol for a crisis that 10 weeks later led to Iranians seizing 15 British sailors and Marines.

Early on the morning of 11 January, helicopter-born US forces launched a surprise raid on a long-established Iranian liaison office in the city of Arbil in Iraqi Kurdistan.

They captured five relatively junior Iranian officials whom the US accuses of being intelligence agents and still holds.'

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