Reagan's Hostages

As we discussed in class, the Iran Contra scandal as a whole is suspicious, but here I'd like to address the way in which the Reagan Administration has been implicated in facilitating a hostage situation--and got away with it!

I retrieved this quote from Consortium News:

"In a Christian Science Monitor commentary about the movie “Argo,” Bani-Sadr wrote that “Ayatollah Khomeini and Ronald Reagan had organized a clandestine negotiation … which prevented the attempts by myself and then-U.S. President Jimmy Carter to free the hostages before the 1980 U.S. presidential election took place. The fact that they were not released tipped the results of the election in favor of Reagan...two of my advisors, Hussein Navab Safavi and Sadr-al-Hefazi, were executed by Khomeini’s regime because they had become aware of this secret relationship between Khomeini, his son Ahmad, … and the Reagan administration.”

(Here is a link to the full commentary by Bani-Sadr on Christian Science Monitor.)

The negotiation between Reagan and Khomeini was later know as "October Surprise".

(Note: Ayatollah Khomeini was a religious and political leader who made Iran the world's first Islamic Republic in 1979, where Bani-Sadr became the first president in 1980. According to BBC. )

By cutting a deal with Iranian leaders to delay the release of American hostages Reagan and his administration facilitated a hostage situation.

Bani-Sadr's information came out in a letter dated December 17, 1992, but by the time it came out the House Task Force conducting the investigation on the Reagan Administration made the decision to dismiss the evidence and declare the Regan Administration and Campaign innocent. The House Task Force made this decision even after being asked to extend the investigation three months.

As we can see, Reagan and his Administration were pretty good at cutting deals, so we can't find this information that surprising--just offensive to the integrity of our Nation.

The New York Times crediting Reagan with the release of the hostages in Iran. Courtesy of Iranian.com.