The 1981 Amsterdam raid occurred on 12 January 1981 when a team of American CIA operatives raided an Amsterdam safehouse belonging to Iranian terrorist Arash Kadivar's right-hand man Qasim Javadi.
By the start of 1981, a state of paranoia gripped the United States as the new media reported that some US intelligence analysts believed that America was already in a state of war with the Soviet Union, while others spread paranoia about Soviet spies living among the American people. These tensions coincided with the Iran hostage crisis, during which 52 American citizens were taken hostage at the American embassy in Tehran. CIA official Emerson Black, with the go-ahead from President-elect Ronald Reagan, decided to dispatch a CIA team to take down Arash Kadivar and Qasim Javadi, two names linked to the hostages; Reagan told Black, "It's time to send a message. There will be no more hostages."
CIA agents Russell Adler and Alex Mason met with Dutch National Police Services Agency chief Hans Timmerman at an Amsterdam bar, where Timmerman told them that Qasim Javadi was well-protected in an apartment safehouse, and assured them that the police would not approach their position until fifteen minutes. The two CIA agents met up with a third colleague, Frank Woods, in a nearby alleyway and armed themselves with weapons from the trunk of Woods' car. They proceeded to ambush a group of Iranian terrorists as they watched a soccer game from the first floor of the safehouse, inaugurating a shootout. Javadi fled, causing the CIA agents to make their way upstairs and across the rooftops, taking down Iranian terrorists as they went. Around 30 Iranians were killed before the CIA agents cornered Qasim on a rooftop. Mason held him over the edge of the building and forced him to reveal that Arash was meeting with someone at the Trabzon Airfield in Turkey the next day. Mason proceeded to knock out Javadi and take him captive, using him for future intelligence gathering.