Arthur Wyatt: Consul-General in Tehran who helped the US Embassy staff escape in 1979 but was sorely traduced by the film 'Argo'

The six terrified Americans who had crept out of a side-exit from the US Embassy in Tehran to the street on 4 November 1979 had nowhere to run.

All 66 of their colleagues were trapped inside, held at gunpoint by militant student followers of Iran’s new Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khomeini.

It was the British who rode up to rescue the escapers. At the behest of a US official who managed to telephone them, UK diplomats found and drove the six to the British Embassy’s summer compound outside the city, a rambling 50-acre tree-bordered site with scattered buildings, called Gholhak, to stay the night.

“If it had been discovered we were helping them, I can assure you we’d all have been for the high jump”, the then Consul-General, Arthur Wyatt, recalled. He and his colleagues, from the British Embassy in the centre of the city, sent out supplies including chocolate, books, and underwear. Wyatt was in charge during the temporary absence of the ambassador, Sir John Graham, at talks in London. The UK embassy staff were risking their lives assisting the fugitives, and it was Wyatt’s responsibility to weigh their safety against what had to be done.

“We were living on our nerves and under constant threat,” he said. “The revolutionary regime ignored all the rules of diplomatic protection and the Vienna Convention.”

Soon after the Americans were picked up, the British embassy building in the centre of Tehran, was briefly invaded. “I said to one of them, ‘You can’t do this, we’re diplomats.’ He just waved his machine pistol around and replied, ‘This is what matters.’” The American escapers – Robert Anders, Henry Schatz, Mark and Cora Lijek, and Joseph and Kathleen Stafford – went on to be helped by New Zealand embassy staff, then stayed for some weeks at the home of the Canadian ambassador, Ken Taylor, before being flown out at the end of January with the help of the CIA.

The British diplomats who picked them up, in an Austin Maxi and a Land Rover, were Martin Williams and Gordon Pirie; to theirs is joined in celebrated memory the name of the chief guard at Gholhak, a former Indian Army soldier from Pakistan called Iskander Khan, who turned back a mob approaching the compound later that night. He convinced the excited crowd that no one they wanted could possibly be inside.

The other US embassy staff were held for 444 days before the crisis was resolved. By that time foreign embassies were closing. Though Sir John Graham had returned, the British embassy, having sent home about 60 staff, was about to shut its doors. Wyatt would be one of the last six to leave, and until they did he assumed the role of charge d’affaires in Iran. The embassy would not reopen for another eight years.

The story of that night and its aftermath was brought back to Wyatt and his colleagues in 2012 by Ben Affleck’s Oscar-winning film Argo. The British were dismayed: the film suggests that UK and New Zealand diplomats turned the escapers away. “Hollywood’s record in this is certainly lacking in many cases,” Wyatt noted. “I’m disappointed to hear how we have been portrayed.” Sir John Graham went further, expressing outrage.

For his year in Iran, Wyatt had learned Farsi; his great love, however, was Turkish, in which he was especially fluent. He was posted three times to Ankara, spending a decade spent there in total. His rank on his final Turkish tour (1981-84), was as Counsellor. It was in Turkey on his first posting, as Third Secretary between 1956 and 1958, that he had met the girl who would become his wife, Yvonne.

Barbara Yvonne Flynn was the daughter of an Army officer based in Cyprus, and they set eyes on one another at an assembly in a grand reception room in the Ambassador’s residence. They married in Cyprus in 1957, and had two daughters, Patricia and Catherine.

Wyatt’s golf clubs accompanied him on every tour of duty, and a round on the links proved useful for subtle diplomacy with host countrys’ officials. The best golfing appointment was to Lagos, where Wyatt was Minister between 1984 and 1986. He took part in many local tournaments, winning many.

One leader who remained impervious to Wyatt’s sporting charm was the acerbic Prime Minister of Malta, Dom Mintoff. Wyatt served at Valletta as Deputy High Commissioner for 18 months in 1975-76, when Mintoff suddenly gave him a week to quit the island.

The exact reason for the expulsion was never established, nor was Wyatt blamed. It is thought something said at regular confidential talks with EEC officials held in Malta reached Mintoff’s ears, and displeased him.

Wyatt’s final and grandest appointment was as High Commissioner to Ghana (1986-89), another country whose culture he came to love. Mementos he treasured included examples of the silk and cotton Kente cloth and intricately carved curved-seated small stools from the Ashanti tribe. He also served in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, where he was Second Secretary from 1956 until 1958; and in Bonn, where he was First Secretary from 1966 until 1970.

Wherever he went, however, Wyatt never forgot his roots in the north-west of England, always supporting Preston North End FC. He was born in Anderton, Lancashire; his father, Frank, worked in the machine shop at Horwich railway works nearby. Wyatt won a county scholarship to Bolton School and excelled at history, winning a scholarship to St Edmund’s College, Cambridge. But after national Service in the Army he applied immediately to the Foreign Office, joining in 1950.

Wyatt’s daughter Catherine died in 1996 of complications from influenza; his wife died in 2002.

Arthur Hope Wyatt, diplomat: born Anderton, Lancashire 12 October 1929: CMG 1980; married 1957 Barbara Flynn (one daughter, and one daughter deceased); died London 4 March 2015.