Can you tell me about Carter, Reagan, and Iran?

For decades, Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi was King of the monarchy that ruled over Iran. His progressive ideas and partnership with the US and UK didn’t sit well with Iranian traditionalists and Islamic followers.

A revolution against King Pahlavi started when he went to the US for cancer treatment, and more likely, to avoid the unrest, in which the dissidents wanted a trial and to execute him. In 1979, a group of Iranian students that called themselves the Muslim Students of the Imam Khomeini Line (supporters of Ayatollah Khomeini) took control of the US Embassy in Iran’s capitol of Tehran. 52 hostages were taken and held for 444 days.

The US, with President Jimmy Carter at the helm, stated that the US would not yield to blackmail by handing back King Pahlavi in order to free the captives. It shortly after this point when Iraq swooped in and attacked Iran. (Why Iraq did this is a whole other story.) Iran turned to the US for support.

There was an incredible amount of work and negotiations conducted on the front end. There is speculation that the timing of the hostages’ release was aimed at the election of President Reagan, but I’m not sure that this was ever proven to be fact.

This is just top-line information. It’s much more complicated than what the above says.

Typo: weak not week.

Interesting details on this:

Within twenty-four hours of the Shah leaving his compound in Bermuda in November, 1979, for cancer treatment at Manhattan’s New York Hospital, radical Islamist students took the American Embassy in Tehran and captured 52 embassy workers as hostages in reprisal against the U.S. for providing sanctuary to the hated Shah.

Under enormous popular pressure to redeem American honor and bring the hostages home, Carter greenlighted Operating Eagle Claw for a go on 24 April, 1980. The hostages had been held under harsh conditions for six months by this time and the country and the press were angry with a president who appeared to do nothing about it.

Operation Eagle Claw resulted in a humiliating disaster for the U.S:
“Eight helicopters were sent to the first staging area, Desert One, but only five arrived in operational condition. One encountered hydraulic problems, another got caught in a cloud of very fine sand, and the last one showed signs of a cracked rotor blade. During planning it was decided that the mission would be aborted if fewer than six helicopters remained, despite only four being absolutely necessary. In a move that is still discussed in military circles, the commanders asked President Carter for permission to abort and Carter granted the request. As the U.S. force prepared to leave, one of the helicopters crashed into a transport aircraft which contained both servicemen and jet fuel. The resulting fire destroyed both aircraft and killed eight servicemen. Operation Eagle Claw was one of Delta Force’s first missions”—Wikipedia article.

In retaliation for this act of war, the Iranian government stated that the hostages would never be released as long as Carter was president. Carter later stated that the failure to free the hostages played a major role in Ronald Reagan’s victory in the 1980 US presidential election.

In the meantime, George Schultz, former vice president of the giant construction firm, Bechtel Corporation (the company that nearly single-handedly brought Saudi Arabia out of the 1600’s by building their national highway system, all their airports, modernized old oil refineries and seaports and also built new ones where there was nothing but desert sand, and modernized many of their cities in the 1970’s), a man extremely well connected in the Arab world and now a key member of California Governor Ronald Reagan’s presidential campaign staff, began secret negotiations with the Iranians for the release of the American hostages. This came to fruition when the Iranian government announced the release of the remaining American hostages during Regan’s inaugural luncheon on January 20th, 1981, just hours after Reagan had been sworn in as President of the United States—fulfilling Reagan’s first and foremost campaign promise.

They were a tribute act to The Three Stooges

The Iranians took the hostages one year (to the day) of the American Presidential Election. When Reagan beat Carter, the Iranians took credit for Carter being beaten. Their release of the hostages was timed with Reagan’s swearing in, not because the Iranians were afraid of Reagan, but because they had beaten Carter, and wanted to start relations with Reagan a good note.
Reagan’s pre-election negotiations with Iran were not to release the hostages, but to defeat any release of them before the election, to stop Carter from winning. Reagan actually was responsible for a longer imprisonment of the hostages. Combine this with Reagan’s secretly selling Iran weapons, and stand in amazement that anyone thinks highly of him.

@Espiritus_Corvus gives a pretty good description of what was going on then.

The bigger (geopolitical) picture was that the Shah was Persian (not muslim), wealthy. and corrupt.

The Mullahs (and in particular Khomeni) were muslims.

Iran was one of the early examples of the Muslim movement asserting itself politically, not just religiously. Until that point, Muslims hadn’t really moved to be governing bodies. The Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, for example, was illegal at the time.

The real problems here go all the way back to the 1953 overthrow of Mohammed Mossadegh (the elected leader of Iran) who was replaced in a coup that was initiated (and managed) by the USA read this.

We (the US) overthrew that guy to benefit the oil companies, replaced him with the Shah, and utterly screwed up the Middle East.

So the US – if you look at this historically – is directly responsible for the Iranian situation today. Everything bad came from that coup in 1953.

I think @filmfann touched on what heard in my circles at the time, that the hostages wound up in their situation longer, because people associated with Reagan made sure that’s what happened. I’m not saying that for sure happened, but the day Reagan is in office is so suspicious. I don’t see how Reagan can take credit for something the day he starts being President. Did he try to take credit? Or, is it just his blind supporters that give him the credit? Not that everyone who supported him was “blind” but those people are who I am talking about in this instance.

@elbanditoroso Why do you separate Persian and Muslim? One is a national origin and the other is a religion. As far as I know the shah was Muslim.

What @Pied_Pfeffer says is true, but there’s a bit more to Shah Pahlavi’s deposition then that. For starters he was installed after a US/UK-led coup that deposed the democratically elected prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh (who had nationalized Iran’s oil industry). The Shah was seem as a puppet, more concerned with kowtowing to the western powers than with his own people. His economic policies let to shortages and inflation, while the Shah lived extravagantly. He created a single political party in Iran then mandated membership in that party. His regime was seen as being, by turns, ether too oppressive or too lax. Thus he was seen as a weak and ineffective ruler. Ultimately he was opposed Islamist and secular groups. In short he completely lost the respect of his people.

@elbanditoroso

The Shah was Persian, as are most Iranians. He was also Muslim, as are most Iranians. One is a religion, the other is an ethnicity.

@Darth_Algar – fair enough, he was a secular muslim – and ran his government as a secular state for the most part.

@elbanditoroso I think you meant to say that the Shah was Persian, not Arab. Just as I should have said that George Shultz was a man extremely well connected in the Middle East, instead of saying he was well connected in the Arab world. The Middle East would have been more correct as this would have covered Iran (formerly Persia, the land of Persians who are not Arabs), whereas the Arab world does not. The Shah was a nominal Muslim, a Shiite to be precise (like 90–95% of the Iranian population), and as occupant of the Peacock Throne, he certainly had to at least pay lip service to Islam.

@JLeslie After Operation Eagle Claw’s disastrous failure in the Iranian desert, the Iranian government made it abundantly clear that the hostages were not going to be released as long as Carter was president. The insinuation was that negotiations would continue with the next president. This, of course, presented an opportunity for any promising presidential candidate to approach the Iranians and make a deal. Through George Shultz, Reagan was able to do precisely that.

Although the negotiations between the Schultz team and the Iranians have always been described as “secret’” they were hardly kept secret from President Carter and certain people in the State Department and the CIA, a man and agencies that had been sidelined from any negotiations because of Operation Eagle Claw.

It may surprise many that a private citizen without official portfolio could be allowed to negotiate, apparently unilaterally, for the release of the US Embassy personnel in Teheran, but not if you take a look at George Shultz’s bona fides. Before he became president of Bechtel Corporation, Shultz had served in three cabinet positions under preceding presidential administrations including Secretary of Labor, Director of Office Management and Budget, and Secretary of Treasury. Under Reagan, he became Secretary of State making him the only other person in the history of the US besides Elliott Richardson to serve four different presidential cabinet positions. If you needed someone the administration could trust to negotiate successfully with the Iranians, this guy from Bechtel was the best bet. If Carter or anybody else would have been foolish enough to stand in the way of these efforts simply due to partisan lines, they would surely have been consigned to the deepest ignominy history has to offer.

This was a major coup for the presidential candidate, an opportunity that he would be foolish not to pursue, but also, as an American citizen with the influence he had at hand in the Bechtel people, it would have been treasonous to not enter in negotiations and make every effort to bring the hostages home.

At the risk of disappointing all the wackjob conspiracy theorists and party hacks on both sides, there was hardly the kind of skulduggery insinuated by these people who want to believe that the Republicans or anyone else would actually extend the time our hostages were captive just to make their party or their president look good. That is absolutely ludicrous.

This, of course, presented an opportunity for any promising presidential candidate to approach the Iranians and make a deal.

Presidential candidates do not make deals for the US government. Making a private deal to keep US citizens imprisoned was treason.

As was Republicans’ hard work in shipping arms to Iran, via Israel, while the hostages were held.

They got away with it. That is one reason why the Bush administration was comfortable with outing CIA agents in 2003.

Conservatives are happy to support anything, even treason, as long as they’re “winning”.

This isn’t news. It’s not a secret. Republicans are loud and proud about their success in working against American interests in service of conservative goals.

@jaytkay
“Presidential candidates do not make deals for the US government. Making a private deal to keep US citizens imprisoned was treason.”

Ahh, but Reagan did, and it was effectively sanctioned by a Democratic administration that had run out of options to free the hostages. As much as you may not like to believe that it is so, and as unheard of as it is today, these two parties sometimes cooperated behind the scenes in order to get through a crisis, protocol be damned. In this case, it was the effort to free the American hostages as soon as possible and “as soon as possible” was within hours of Carter leaving the presidency. It might be helpful for Americans to see it that way: They weren’t freed as soon as Reagan entered the presidency as much as they were freed when Carter left it.

@jaytkay Excuse me, I misread your statement as “Making a private deal to free US citizens imprisoned…” probably because I assumed you were sane. Nobody made a deal to to keep US citizens imprisoned. I’m utterly surprised to see that you of all people have joined the tin hat crowd.

it was effectively sanctioned by a Democratic administration

“The negotiations we deny ever happened were sanctioned!”

LOL

Anyone want to take a shot at explaining the “Iran-Contra” affair, and Oliver North, the CIA et al?

@Zaku

Long story short: the Reagan administration arranged the covert sale of arms to Iran, which was designated a sponsor of terrorism, under an embargo and at war with Iraq (considered, at the time, our ally) through Israel (which, oddly, was secretly giving aid to Iran in their war with Iraq) in order to covertly fund paramilitary groups in Nicaragua. Oliver North played the patsy and took the fall for it.